Educating professional software engineers: pathways and progress in the Australian experience

Australia has seized the international initiative in the recognition of software engineers as professionals. Of the 37 universities in Australia offering undergraduate courses in computing, eleven offer courses in software engineering which are accredited by the Institute of Engineers, Australia (IEAust) and which may lead the graduate to membership of the Institute. In this way, the Institute has plausible claim to being the first national professional engineering body in the world to have accredited four-year undergraduate software engineering degrees as professional qualifications. The paper traces the development of the relationship between the Institute of Engineers and the computing industry and looks at the changes this relationship has wrought in the content and emphasis of tertiary software engineering educatio

Software metrics for monitoring software engineering projects

As part of the undergraduate course offered by Edith Cowan University, the Department of Computer Science has (as part of a year\u27s study) a software engineering group project. The structure of this project was divided into two units, Software Engineering l and Software Engineering 2. ln Software Engineering 1, students were given the group project where they had to complete and submit the Functional Requirement and Detail System Design documentation. In Software Engineering 2, students commenced with the implementation of the software, testing and documentation. The software was then submitted for assessment and presented to the client. To aid the students with the development of the software, the department had adopted EXECOM\u27s APT methodology as its standard guideline. Furthermore, the students were divided into groups of 4 to 5, each group working on the same problem. A staff adviser was assigned to each project group. The purpose of this research exercise was to fulfil two objectives. The first objective was to ascertain whether there is a need to improve the final year software engineering project for future students by enhancing any aspect that may be regarded as deficient. The second objective was to ascertain the factors that have the most impact on the quality of the delivered software. The quality of the delivered software was measured using a variety of software metrics. Measurement of software has mostly been ignored until recently or used without true understanding of its purpose. A subsidiary objective was to gain an understanding of the worth of software measurement in the student environment One of the conclusions derived from the study suggests that teams who spent more time on software design and testing, tended to produce better quality software with less defects. The study also showed that adherence to the APT methodology led to the project being on schedule and general team satisfaction with the project management. One of the recommendations made to the project co-ordinator was that staff advisers should have sufficient knowledge of the software engineering process

Undergraduate software engineering - an innovative degree at Swinburne

In this paper we outline the context for the development of an undergraduate degree in Software Engineering in Australia, reflect on curriculum development ideas relevant to such a degree, and describe aspects of the Computer Science degree at Swinburne which, despite its title, may be viewed as a Software Engineering degree, We emphasise the role of project-based units within the degree