Human and Social Factors in Software Engineering

This course explores how Human-Centric Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming the way software developers create, collaborate, and sustain projects. We focus on how AI tools influence developers’ creativity, productivity, and the social dynamics that emerge in software teams of students and professionals in industry and in Open Source Software communities. The course connects human, social, and organizational factors with the technical aspects of software engineering to understand how developers interact, learn, and evolve alongside intelligent systems.

We will primarily analyze data from Open Source Software (OSS) to study patterns of software developers’ human-AI collaboration. Topics include:

  • Studying Human–AI Collaboration in Software Engineering
    • Quantitative and qualitative methods for measuring, analyzing, and explaining how developers and AI systems work together, including surveys, repository mining, experiments, and qualitative analysis.
  • AI, Developer Cognition, and Creative Productivity
    • How AI systems influence how developers think, learn, generate ideas, and produce software, including effects on cognitive load, flow, creativity, and productivity.
  • AI and Developer Participation in Software Communities
    • How AI adoption shapes developer motivation, retention, attrition, belonging, and contribution patterns in software teams and Open Source Software ecosystems.
  • AI in Developer Communication and Feedback
    • How AI affects tone, inclusiveness, emotional labor, and toxicity in code reviews and team interactions, and the role of AI-based moderation and support tools.
  • Responsible and Ethical Use of AI in Software Engineering
    • How issues of authorship, accountability, bias, privacy, and governance emerge when AI becomes embedded in software development workflows.

In 2024, one of our student teams published their class project at the ACM Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE 2025) conference, applied for and received an NSF award that covered all their expenses to travel to Norway and present the paper. So, yes, this is a class where research can lead to a paper in your CV. ***

Luther, Yanye, et al. “Analyzing the Communication Patterns of Different Teammate Types in a Software Engineering Course Project.” Proceedings of the 33rd ACM International Conference on the Foundations of Software Engineering. 2025.

The course is open to both graduate and undergraduate students interested in empirical software engineering and the human aspects of computing.

2025 Fall Semester Details

Instructor

Bianca Trinkenreich

Office

Computer Science 342

Email

bianca.trinkenreich@colostate.edu

Office Hours

MW 11a – 12p
Class Schedule

Section

Schedule

Location

Instructor

001

MW 9:30a – 10:45a

Clark 361

Bianca

801

Async

Online

Bianca
TA Information

Md Nazmul Islam (mdnazmul.Islam@colostate.edu)

TA

M/W 4pm-5pm