Teaching Software Engineering through Robotics

This paper presents a newly-developed robotics programming course and reports the initial results of software engineering education in robotics context. Robotics programming, as a multidisciplinary course, puts equal emphasis on software engineering and robotics. It teaches students proper software engineering -- in particular, modularity and documentation -- by having them implement four core robotics algorithms for an educational robot. To evaluate the effect of software engineering education in robotics context, we analyze pre- and post-class survey data and the four assignments our students completed for the course. The analysis suggests that the students acquired an understanding of software engineering techniques and principles

Software Engineering Education by Example

Based on the old but famous distinction between "in the small" and "in the large" software development, at Nancy Universit\'e, UHP Nancy 1, we experience for a while software engineering education thanks to actual project engineering. This education method has the merit to enable students to discover and to overcome actual problems when faced to a large project which may be conducted by a large development team. The mode of education is a simulation of an actual software engineering project as encountered in "real life\'e" activities

Gamification for Software Engineering Education

Antud bakalaureusetöö eesmärgiks on uurida mängustamist ja selle rakendamise võimalusi hariduses, eelkõige tarkvatatehnika hariduses. Bakalaureusetöö tulemusena valmis esiteks teoreetiline osa, kus käsitletakse mängustamise mõistet, selgitatakse välja kuidas oleks võimalik selle printsiipe kasutada õppetöö parandamiseks ja tuuakse välja nende rakendamise juhised. Teiseks valmis konkreetse aine mängustamise plaan toetudes teoreetilisele materjalile, soovituste arutelu ja antud õppeaine õppejõu hinnang töö käigus väljapakutud soovitustele.The main goal of this thesis is to find out what gamification is and if and how it could be applied in the context of education and more precisely in higher software engineering education. The main outcome of the thesis is firstly, summarising theoretical material on gamification for education. Among them a set of guidelines for undertaking the approach are drawn out. Secondly, gamification plan of a course based on the theoretical materials, discussion on the proposal and a preliminary assessment on the suggestions by the course leader

Closing the gap between software engineering education and industrial needs

According to different reports, many recent software engineering graduates often face difficulties when beginning their professional careers, due to misalignment of the skills learnt in their university education with what is needed in industry. To address that need, many studies have been conducted to align software engineering education with industry needs. To synthesize that body of knowledge, we present in this paper a systematic literature review (SLR) which summarizes the findings of 33 studies in this area. By doing a meta-analysis of all those studies and using data from 12 countries and over 4,000 data points, this study will enable educators and hiring managers to adapt their education / hiring efforts to best prepare the software engineering workforce

Software Engineering Education Needs More Engineering

To what extent is “software engineering” really “engineering” as this term is commonly understood? A hallmark of the products of the traditional engineering disciplines is trustworthiness based on dependability. But in his keynote presentation at ICSE 2006 Barry Boehm pointed out that individuals’, systems’, and peoples’ dependency on software is becoming increasingly critical, yet that dependability is generally not the top priority for software intensive system producers. Continuing in an uncharacteristic pessimistic vein, Professor Boehm said that this situation will likely continue until a major software-induced system catastrophe similar in impact to the 9/11 World Trade Center catastrophe stimulates action toward establishing accountability for software dependability. He predicts that it is highly likely that such a software-induced catastrophe will occur between now and 2025. It is widely understood that software, i.e., computer programs, are intrinsically different from traditionally engineered products, but in one aspect they are identical: the extent to which the well-being of individuals, organizations, and society in general increasingly depend on software. As wardens of the future through our mentoring of the next generation of software developers, we believe that it is our responsibility to at least address Professor Boehm’s predicted catastrophe. Traditional engineering has, and continually addresses its social responsibility through the evolution of the education, practice, and professional certification/licensing of professional engineers. To be included in the fraternity of professional engineers, software engineering must do the same. To get a rough idea of where software engineering currently stands on some of these issues we conducted two surveys. Our main survey was sent to software engineering academics in the U.S., Canada, and Australia. Among other items it sought detail information on their software engineering programs. Our auxiliary survey was sent to U.S. engineering institutions to get some idea about how software engineering programs compared with those in established engineering disciplines of Civil, Electrical, and Mechanical Engineering. Summaries of our findings can be found in the last two sections of our paper

Sustainable software engineering education curricula development

Climate change risk and environmental degradation are the most critical issues of our society. Our technology influenced daily life style involves many software and apps which are used by large society and their use is increasing than ever before. Sustainability is a significant topic for future professionals and more so for Information Technology (IT) professionals and software engineers due to its impact on the society. It is significant to motivate and raise concern among students and faculty members regarding sustainability by including it into Software Engineering curriculum. Key words: Sustainability, Sustainable Software Engineering, Curricula, Software Engineering.publishedVersio

Some framework ideas for software engineering education

It is difficult, if not impossible, to find something that is not changing in computer technology: circuits, architectures, languages, methods, fields of application ... The "central object" itself of this brand of engineering, software, represents such a diverse reality (many objects) that the fact that it has only one name gives rise to considerable confusion. This issue, among others, was taken up by Fox (1) and, at this point, I would like to underline that it is more of a pragmatic issue than an academic one. Thus, Software Engineering Education moves in an unstable, undefined'world. This axiom governs and limits the. validity of all educational proposals in the area of Software Engineering and, thereforer all the ideas presented in this paper

Balancing software engineering education and industrial needs

In the world of information and communications technologies the demand for professionals with software engineering skills grows at an exponential rate. On this ground, we have conducted a study to help both academia and the software industry form a picture of the relationship between the competences of recent graduates of undergraduate and graduate software engineering programmes and the tasks that these professionals are to perform as part of their jobs in industry. Thanks to this study, academia will be able to observe which skills demanded by industry the software engineering curricula do or do not cater for, and industry will be able to ascertain which tasks a recent software engineering programme graduate is well qualified to perform. The study focuses on the software engineering knowledge guidelines provided in SE2004 and GSwE2009, and the job profiles identified by Career Space