What Do We Do When We Teach Software Engineering?

Many UK higher education institutions offer software engineering programmes, but the purpose and relevance of these programmes within computing science departments is not always obvious. The reality is that while advanced economies require many more skilled software engineers, universities are not delivering them. This is at least true in the context of the United Kingdom, where there are high numbers of software engineering vacancies and unemployed software engineering graduates. A possible explanation could be that curriculum content of software engineering programmes in universities needs to be reconsidered to meet the needs of industry. However, reconsidering curriculum content alone is unlikely to be transformative as there is little to be gained from changing to an emerging methodology, language or framework. Instead, an alternative direction could be to reconsider curriculum delivery and the identity of software engineering within computing science itself. In this paper, we contextualise the challenge by considering the history of software engineering education and some of its key developments. We then consider some of the alternative delivery approaches, before arguing cooperative programmes provide a opportunity for institutions to reconsider software engineering education

Computer Science Education: Secure Software

Computer security problems have been increasing significantly as the Internet has been increasing the means to both access and to distribute both code and data. Attempts to address these problems through computer science education by focusing on information security, network security, and system security have not been entirely successful. The security problems are serious enough at this time that both industry and academia are looking for other solutions and even for other partial solutions. One of these proposed partial solutions focuses the security investigations on the commonality that underlies all software: code.The author proposed that all computer science undergraduates should be required to take a computer security course that focuses on code security early in their undergraduate program. The objectives of this course would be to teach the importance of code security, to instruct in practical coding techniques for making programs more secure, and to provide practice in these secure coding techniques.The author has taught an introductory security course with emphasis in code security over the course of one semester during this research project. The students in the course ranged from second semester freshman, straight out of Computer Science I, to seniors graduating at the end of that semester. While results from the pre-test and post-test surveys completed by course subjects were mixed, they suggested that the course was at least partially successful. The students did seem to have a better understanding of computer security but seem to have not improved as much within the area of secure coding as the author had anticipated. The author feels that more repetition and feedback on the writing of secure code will improve the course the next time it is offered.The author believes these proposals are not a perfect solution for the present computer security problem. However, the author does believe that these proposals are a valid partial solution.Computer Science Departmen