Blackbox

      Michael Kölling
      Ian Utting
      Davin McCall
      Neil Brown
      Amjad Altadmri
      Hamza Hamza

The main data that will be sent is the (anonymised) source code from your projects. We also record the use of the BlueJ interface: for example, which methods are invoked, use of the codepad, use of the debugger, and how you use other features of BlueJ. No identifying information (e.g. username) will be sent with the data.

The data will be sent to a server hosted at the University of Kent in the UK. Researchers at the University of Kent will have access to the data in order to analyse it, and access will also be provided to other recognised computing education researchers for the purpose of analysis.

No identifying information (e.g. username, machine name) is sent to the server. The name of the project is sent, but the full path (which probably contains your username) is not. Source code is sent, but all comments before the class begins are blanked out -- that is, the top comment before your class will be blanked, as that typically contains your name. All other code (and comments) are sent to the server.

The exact rate at which data will be sent is dependent on the actions you are performing and the size of your source code base. As an estimate, we believe for a handful of small classes (e.g. the projects accompanying the textbook) that the upload will be around 3-4 Megabytes each hour of continued use, and the download will be around 1 Megabyte each hour. As a quick point of comparison, loading the BBC news front page once involves downloading around 0.5 Megabytes of data and uploading 0.06 Megabytes.

To change your participation in this research, in BlueJ 3.1.0 and later, go to the Preferences window, and under the Miscellaneous tab there is an option to change your current participation.

Your participation status is stored in BlueJ's properties file. This is stored in your user profile directory on your machine. For a home machine, or a school network which supports persistent profiles, you should be asked once, and this decision stored thereafter.

However if your network does not keep your profile, you will be asked every time you load BlueJ, because BlueJ cannot tell that you have been asked before. In this case, you will need to contact your network administrator and tell them to either let profiles persist (the ideal solution), or otherwise to alter the bluej.defs file supplied with BlueJ to include the line:

blackbox.uuid=optout

If you want to opt-out your users by default, you can alter the bluej.defs file that is installed with BlueJ to include the line:

blackbox.uuid=optout

If you are having a technical problem with BlueJ, even if it is related to the Blackbox project, please contact us via our standard support form. If you have a question about the research side of the Blackbox project, you can contact us at blackbox-admin@bluej.org.