Deadline extension: May 10, 2015 (AOE time)

Teaching and SPLs

Education has a key role to play for disseminating the constantly growing body of Software Product Line (SPL) knowledge. Teaching SPLs is challenging and it is unclear how SPLs can be taught, what are the possible gaps and difficulties faced, what are the benefits, or what is the material available. This workshop aims to explore and explain the current status and ongoing work on teaching SPLs at universities, colleges, and in industry (e.g., by consultants). Participants will discuss gaps and difficulties faced when teaching SPLs, benefits to research and industry, different ways to teach SPL knowledge, common threads, interests, and problems. The overall goal is to strengthen the important aspect of teaching in the SPL community.

A recent survey on teaching of SPLs provides some insights, but much more things remain to be done.

SPLTea’14 attracted more than 30 people (http://spltea.irisa.fr/2014/). SPLTea’15 will continue the effort!

The workshop aims at bringing together researchers and practitioners to discuss their experiences in SPL teaching. We also aim to learn from other communities, i.e., we want to attract submissions that discuss teaching experiences in general and their applicability to the SPL field. This year there will be a special focus on the design and the population of an open repository of resources dedicated to SPL teaching: http://teaching.variability.io

Topics and Submissions

We particularly encourage experience papers, which identify and structure open challenges and research questions. We are interested in all topics related to teaching in the context of SPLs. Topics include, but are not limited to:

• Experiences with teaching SPLs to students or practitioners
• Best practices for teaching SPLs
• Innovative curricula or course formats
• Impact of the online education movement (MOOCs) on teaching SPLs
• Innovative methods for teaching SPLs in online courses
• Integration of SPL research into teaching and training
• Continuing SPL education in the face of rapid technological change
• The influence of new paradigms, such as cloud computing or global software development, on SPL teaching
• Ensuring graduated students meet industry needs through the understanding of SPL techniques
• Innovative use of social media for knowledge management in SPL teaching

New this year: we solicit short papers (2 pages min, 4 pages max) presenting teaching resources that will be publicly committed in the open repository. Such papers will describe the resources’ content, the context in which the resources have been used, and how the resources can be reused by others.

We are seeking for research papers, experience reports (2 – 8 pages) as well as position and vision papers (4 pages max) in ACM SIG Alternative Proceedings Style. Submissions will be selected based on the relevance to the workshop topics and the suitability to trigger discussions.

Papers should be submitted as PDF files via EasyChair

The selected papers will be included in volume 2 of the SPLC conference proceedings published by ACM.

The comprehensive call for papers

Important dates

Deadline extension: May 10, 2015 (AOE time)

Submission	May 10, 2015 (AOE time)
Notification of Acceptance	June 1, 2015
Camera-ready Deadline	June 15, 2015
Workshop	July 20, 2015