Teaching Software Development to Non-Software Engineering Students

This paper argues that although the object-oriented programming (OOP) paradigm is appropriate for students taking programming modules on Higher Education (HE) software engineering course, this paradigm is not as relevant for students from other courses who study programming modules. It is also asserts that adopting another paradigm when teaching programming to non-software engineering students need not prevent the encouragement of good software engineering practices The paper discusses the software development model, procedures, techniques and programming language that the author requires non-software engineering students to employ when developing their software. This discussion also includes consideration of implementation issues in an educational context. The paper concludes that his alternative approach has been successfully implemented, that it requires the student to adopt a rigorous approach to development and that it encourages best software engineering practices. The conclusions also note that delivering this alternative offers the opportunity to include good educational practice, such as role-play

Measuring the Impact of Agile Coaching on Students’ Performance

Agile methods have been in the cutting-edge of software engineering as a means to improve management of software development processes. The widespread use of such methods in professional contexts has encouraged their integration into software engineering training and undergraduate courses. Although there are several research works that have focused on teaching Scrum through simulating a software development project, they have covered only the learning of practices within a Scrum team, and a few of them have tackled non-technical skills beyond the development practices. Thus, we claim that it is necessary to help students understand Scrum rules, clear project obstacles and tackle non-technical issues such as management and teamwork.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativa (SADIO

Measuring the Impact of Agile Coaching on Students’ Performance

Agile methods have been in the cutting-edge of software engineering as a means to improve management of software development processes. The widespread use of such methods in professional contexts has encouraged their integration into software engineering training and undergraduate courses. Although there are several research works that have focused on teaching Scrum through simulating a software development project, they have covered only the learning of practices within a Scrum team, and a few of them have tackled non-technical skills beyond the development practices. Thus, we claim that it is necessary to help students understand Scrum rules, clear project obstacles and tackle non-technical issues such as management and teamwork.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativa (SADIO

IT Systems Development: An IS Curricula Course that Combines Best Practices of Project Management and Software Engineering

Software Engineering in IS Curricula Software engineering course is taught to higher education students majoring in Computer Science (CS), Computer Engineering (CE), and Software Engineering (SE). Software engineering course is also taught in other disciplines, either as a mandatory or as an elective course, such as Information Systems (IS). IS is a broader field than CS and includes parts of CS. IS fie ld could be described as an interdisplinary field that studies the design and use of information systems in a social context. As noted in IS2002 model curricula (Gorgone et al., 2002) , IS as a fie ld of academic study exists under a variety of at least thirteen (13) different curricula, including Information Systems, Management Information Systems, Computer Information Systems, Information Management, Business Information Systems, Informatics, Information Resources Management, Information Technology, Information Technology Systems, Information Technology Resources Management, Accounting Information Systems, Information Science, and Information and Quantitative Science. The author\u27s early experience was that teaching IS students a software engineering course in the same way as CS students was not successful. This is mainly because IS students have significantly less background in programming than CS students. This experience encouraged him to accommodate topics on project management and SE best practices lab using Rational Suite Enterprise (Rational Suite Enterprise, 2008). This new approach was relevant to IS curricula and with accordance with IS2002.10 project management and practice course guidelines. Hilburn, Bagert, Mengel, & Oexmann (2008) proposed that several computing associations including the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), the IEEE Computer Society (IEEECS), and the Computer Sciences Accreditation Board (CSAB) have provided encouragement, support, and guidance in developing quality curricula that are viable and dynamic. However, most computing programs still devote little time to software life cycle development, software processes, quality issues, team skills, and other areas of software engineering essentials to effective commercial software development. Hence, new graduates know little about what are best practices in software engineering profession (e.g., practices related to use of software processes, team building, front-end development). Therefore, it is the role of faculty members teaching such courses to redesign and implement curricula that focus on practice of software engineering, and other related issues. This paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents arguments for the alternative approach. Section 3 presents IS2002.10 course specifications. Section 4 presents IS software engineering body of knowledge. Section 5 presents the project component, Section 6 presents a mapping from IS2002.10 course specification onto the IS software engineering course. Section 7 presents evaluation of the proposed approach. Finally, conclusions are presented in Section 8. Why IT Systems Development Course? We have taught the IT Systems Development course to IS students for seven years, and we believe we hit upon an approach that works. Instead of trying to instruct students in theory of various techniques, we teach them what we believe of as software development. From the management side IS students are expected to deal with non-technical challenges arising from project situations, including understand project domain and requirements, how to be a team player, how to schedule work between team members, and how to cope with time pressures and hard deadlines. As indicated by (Weaver, 2004), students often have limited experience in projects management. They do not appreciate the need for planning and take more time than anticipated to complete tasks. We have developed the creation of a set of guidelines for accommodating topics on project management to help students deal with non-technical issues of software development.

Measuring the Impact of Agile Coaching on Students’ Performance

Agile methods have been in the cutting-edge of software engineering as a means to improve management of software development processes. The widespread use of such methods in professional contexts has encouraged their integration into software engineering training and undergraduate courses. Although there are several research works that have focused on teaching Scrum through simulating a software development project, they have covered only the learning of practices within a Scrum team, and a few of them have tackled non-technical skills beyond the development practices. Thus, we claim that it is necessary to help students understand Scrum rules, clear project obstacles and tackle non-technical issues such as management and teamwork.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativa (SADIO

Haptics-Augmented Training Software for Undergraduate Engineering Mechanics

This paper presents the development efforts for a set of software activities and tutorials to augment teaching and learning in standard required undergraduate engineering mechanics courses. Using these software activities, students can change parameters, predict answers, compare outcomes, interact with animations, and feel the results. The overall system aims to increase teaching and learning effectiveness by rendering the concepts compelling, fun, and engaging. The problem with current examples and homework problems is that they are flat, static, boring, and non-engaging, which may lead to student attrition and a less than full grasp of fundamental principles. We implement integration of haptics technology with educational products to enable improvement in undergraduate engineering mechanics education. The current system is composed of a computer (laptop or desktop), a haptic device and a set of haptic modules. Currently, two modules, Interactive Free-Body Diagram (Box Motion) and Rigid Body Dynamics (Box Motion), were developed and several others are under development

The effect of programming competency on success in undergraduate team projects in computing science

PhD ThesisAs part of the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning Project, Active Learning in Computing (CETL ALiC) Newcastle University, in partnership with Durham University, developed a Cross-Site Software Development Activity in their Stage 2 Software Engineering modules (FHEQ level 5) and both universities carried out this activity during the academic years 2005/06 to 2008/09. This initiative involved ‘Companies’ of Newcastle and Durham students working in partnership to develop a software solution together throughout the academic year. This initiative was risky because assessment and marking of deliverables for the project was conducted between staff at both sites. Each module had differing assessment weightings, learning outcomes and taught content. Therefore it was imperative that CETL ALiC staff kept a close eye on assessment outcomes during the project to ensure that no students were disadvantaged by the Cross-Site work. This thesis outlines an initial review of assessment carried out at Newcastle University, the findings of which led to some concerns about fairness in attainment between students on different programmes at Newcastle due to student perceptions about the ‘higher’ value of programming skills and the ‘lower’ value of soft skills. These findings were the motivation for the deeper investigations into the assessment framework used in the Software Engineering Team Project (SETP) at Newcastle University that are presented in this thesis. The investigations show that student perceptions of the value of technical roles in the project teams led to students in non-technical roles being awarded lower peer percentage weightings, which in turn meant they achieved lower overall marks for the module. The thesis introduces remedial work in the form of competency matrices that was carried out in an attempt to address this problem. This remedial work led to the development of the Student Appraisal Method, a 360 degree feedback method of formative assessment that is presented at the end of this thesis. This method of assessment can be generalised for other disciplines and should ensure students become more aware of their own personal competency development in team projects in the future and that they make better ii judgements about the contribution of their teammates, irrespective of whether their role is technical or non-technical during Software Engineering projects

COMPUTER BASED NON TRADITIONAL CONTROL SYSTEM COURSE TEACHING IN INDONESIA ELECTRONICS ENGINEERING POLYTECHNICS EDUCATION

Visual simulation is expected to provide simulation results with a view that allows the students to see and feel like doing the practice of creating a control system. Software control system simulation applications are expected not only easy to use but also interactive to the needs of the computer specifications used are not too sophisticated. In this study the computer based control system course teaching was designed using the combination of an electronics control plant and control system simulation which is called nontraditional control system course teaching. The modelling simulation software application is a solution to see the performance of the controlled system which was developed to implement a control system which is light and easy-to-operate. Spreadsheets can be used to simulate the electronics controlled plant in the development of linear control system which is easy to operate with minimum computer specification that can be used by students. The result of proposed simulation confirms the well-known PID controller effects, and verified by the response of the real DC motor speed electronics control plant developed and can be used as a visual simulation for students of electronics engineering polytechnics students. Modeling simulations to visualize the performance of electronics control circuits are used to overcome the limitations of resources in the laboratory on the administration of polytechnic education in Indonesia. In its implementation in the laboratory, lecturers are encouraged to improve the spreadsheet programming capabilities. The development of this study is that non-traditional electronic control teaching can be implemented through internet of things and cloud computing

Assessment of the use of technical software by the students in the context of mechanical engineering

[EN] In the framework of the European Higher Education area, university teaching has focused in recent years on adapting Master's and Bachelor's degrees to the demands of the professional sector. To do this, the training and development of the generic and specific skills recommended for the incorporation of students into the job market have been priority objectives in the approach to study plans. However, there is no consensus on the methodologies for evaluating these skills, especially regarding how to separate the acquisition and / or improvement of the skills from the specific knowledge and skills of the subjects. Due to the lack of time, teaching staff seek methodologies that do not involve additional tests for the evaluation of competences, which would increase the number of tests to a non-realistic number with the corresponding assessment duties for the professors. In order to make a contribution in this regard, this work presents an approach for evaluating the ability to handle specific software applied to problems in the area of mechanical engineering. This work proposes a methodology for acquiring the required skills and an evaluation system to grade the degree of expertise in the manipulation of the software. In our University, this skill is called the Specific Instrumental Skill, which measures the ability of the students for using the tools in engineering, like, in this case, the use of software to run structural numerical simulations as ANSYS®. The methodology proposed is based on an a priori training. This training is based on 2 hours weekly sessions where the students should solve, in groups of 2 or 3 students, a set of labs with the help of the professor. The students do not need to deliver any report to the professor since the objective of the sessions is the training of the students. Therefore, the pressure over the student is low and the professor avoid to mark a high number of student¿s reports, allowing him to focus only on the learning process of the students and not on the evaluation during the training sessions. These labs increase the difficulty along a number of sessions. The last session consists in an exam in which the students must solve a lab similar to those already solved during the training sessions. This time, each student will work individually without the help of the professor and with a control of the time. Finally, the performance of the methodology is checked by a cross-test for the same students who are part of the group of students of another subject (control subject) where the same tool (ANSYS®) is used. The collected data showed that the students following this methodology acquire the sufficient expertise for handling the software and their skills outperform those of the students of the control subject who did not follow the proposed methodology. As a conclusion, the methodology proposed in this work guarantees a good level of expertise for the students, as shown by the results. Since the results in the final lab exam and the results of the cross-test coincides, the use of the final test exam could be interpreted as a good indicator of the degree of expertise in the use of the software. Additionally, the proposed methodology reduces the work load for the professor as it only requires assessing 1 report per student (instead of several reports for each group of 2 or 3 students in each of the session) while ensuring the authorship of the report.Authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Vicerrectorado de Estudios, Calidad y Acreditación and the Vicerrectorado de Recursos Digitales y Documentación of the Universitat Politècnica de València (project PIME B/19-20/165) and the Instituto de Ciencias de la Educación of the Universitat Politècnica de València (EICE INTEGRAL).Nadal, E.; Rupérez Moreno, MJ.; Giner Navarro, J.; Rovira, A.; Ródenas, JJ.; Martínez Casas, J.; Pedrosa, AM. (2020). Assessment of the use of technical software by the students in the context of mechanical engineering. IATED Academy. 3344-3348. https://doi.org/10.21125/iceri.2020.0756S3344334

Holistic analysis of the effectiveness of a software engineering teaching approach

To provide the best training in software engineering, several approaches and strategies are carried out. Some of them are more theoretical, learned through books and manuals, while others have a practical focus and often done in collaboration with companies. In this paper, we share an approach based on a balanced mix to foster the assimilation of knowledge, the approximation with what is done in software companies and student motivation. Two questionnaires were also carried out, one involving students, who had successfully completed the subject in past academic years (some had already graduated, and others are still students), and other questionnaire involving companies, in the field of software development, which employ students from our school. The analysis of the perspectives of the different stakeholders allows an overall and holistic) view, and a general understanding, of the effectiveness of the software engineering teaching approach. We analyse the results of the questionnaires and share some of the experiences and lessons learned.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio