Incorporating an object-oriented programming language into the first year of a software engineering education

The recent move towards more Computer Science in school in the UK has obvious implications for teacher education, both for in-service and pre-service teachers. In England and other parts of the UK we have seen an unprecedented rate of change in the way that curricula are changing from a focus on learning to use software applications to the introduction of Computer Science throughout primary and secondary schools. In this paper we describe some of the challenges that we have faced, the progress made in the integration of CS, and the support provided for teachers in their professional development. Current developments seek to support teachers with varying needs in a holistic way and we propose a transformational model of professional development [1] for CS, both for in-service teachers as well as forming the basis of new teacher training programmes.KeywordsCS teacher educationteacher professional developmentCS secondary school education

Learning Software Engineering principles, processes, methods and tools is a prerequisite to becoming a Software Engineer. The technological advancements and revolution in this new century are probing the boundaries of education and training in software engineering. This work tries to locate the shortcomings in existing approaches to Education in Software Engineering (ESE) in respect to today's technological advancements. We hereby proposed a new model for Education in Software Engineering to bridge the industry-academia gap.

This white paper argues that formal methods need to be better rooted in higher education curricula for computer science and software engineering programmes of study. To this end, it advocates improved teaching of formal methods; systematic highlighting of formal methods within existing, ‘classical’ computer science courses; and the inclusion of a compulsory formal methods course in computer science and software engineering curricula. These recommendations are based on the observations that formal methods are an essential and cost-effective means to increase software quality; however computer science and software engineering programmes typically fail to provide adequate training in formal methods; and thus there is a lack of computer science graduates who are qualified to apply formal methods in industry. This white paper is the result of a collective effort by authors and participants of the 1st International Workshop on Formal Methods – Fun for Everybody which was held in Bergen, Norway, 2–3 December 2019. As such, it represents insights based on learning and teaching computer science and software engineering (with or without formal methods) at various universities across Europe.

Over the past six years, the School of Engineering and Computer Science (ECS) at Baylor University has designed, developed, and successfully implemented an international study abroad program aimed at giving engineering and computer science students an opportunity to study abroad while accruing course credit that counts toward their degree plans. For the past two years this program also integrated the commercial side of innovation by joining with the Hankamer School of Business (HSB), making the program a multidisciplinary experience in International Technology Entrepreneurship. With continuous improvements based on our students' and other constituents' needs and the insights gained during four successful study abroad trips to Europe, the School of Engineering and Computer Science and the Business School are now working to provide an enhanced summer study abroad program in an area of the world where economic growth and innovation are expanding rapidly - China. This paper will document the redesign of the summer abroad experience into a program where technology and business students from American universities are immersed in an intensive six weeks in Shanghai, with technology and business students from China, working on real-world technology innovation with real-world multi-national and Chinese companies. The program will also include critically important training in Chinese cultural awareness, including cultural sensitivity, history, and current business and technology working environments.

In September of 1999, female students in the School of Engineering & Computer Science at Baylor University decided to start a student section of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE). Their main purpose in doing this was to foster a sense of community among female students in the School, especially in disciplines where the ratio of female to male students is very low. Over the past two and a half years, the Baylor student section of SWE has thrived. They have been recognized not only in the region, but are currently the Best New Student Section in the nation (SWE National Conference, Denver, Colorado, June 2001). A major benefit of this participation has been an apparent increase in the retention of female engineering and computer science students in the school. This paper documents the approach of the SWE officers to the growth and development of the student section, and includes data on the effects of the student chapter of SWE on retention of female students in the School of Engineering & Computer Science at Baylor University.

Summary form only given. Today, software is being developed and maintained not just by engineers educated formally but also by people from widely different backgrounds including children, knowledge workers among many others. However, a number of studies indicate that most of these people are not equipped with enough software engineering skills leading to low-quality software. On the other hand, an analysis of literature reveals that the significant potential of learning theories (LTs) like Learning by Doing, Reflection, Model-based and so on has not been fully utilized by Software Engineering Education (SEE) and Training community. In this context, the main thrust of this poster is to emphasize the need for using vast amount of LTs (nearly 110) available to effectively and efficiently teach software engineering and help in producing quality software engineers. In this poster, we motivate the need for use of LTs in SEE, while summarizing significant ones and their use in SE. The poster also presents a mapping of key SE topics and their proposed LTs while emphasizing the role of context in using LTs. The poster further presents teaching Software Product Lines as an illustrative example. Finally, future work of this poster includes designing modeling languages to represent LTs and mapping them to topics in SWEBOK and GSwERC (software engineering curriculum).

Research was conducted on using agile methods in software engineering education. This paper explores the perceptions of students from five different academic levels of agile practices. Information has been gathered through the collection of quantitative and qualitative data over three academic years, and analysis reveals student experiences, mainly positive but also some negative. Student opinions indicate the preference to continue to use agile practices at the workplace if allowed. A way these findings may potentially be extrapolated to the industrial settings is discussed. Finally, this report should encourage other academics considering adoption of agile methods in their computer science or software engineering curricula.

Society becomes more dependent on software, and the quality of software has a direct and vital impact on the life of people. Therefore, the importance of software engineering ethics is highlighted. Further, it is necessary to increase the emphasis on ethics education in software engineering curricula. However, in practice, there is generally not a single software engineering ethics course. Even if there is, it is a marginal role. How to effectively integrate ethics topics into software engineering education is a key issue. In this paper, we first analyze the relevance of two domains: Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice and software engineering management that is a subdomain of Software Engineering Body of Knowledge. The results show that they are highly related. Therefore, it is feasible and reasonable to integrate ethics issues into the course of software engineering management, which is usually a required course. This integration brings a solid position for the ethical education. In addition, we suggest new description of codes to promote their fusion, further put forward some ideas about their fusion in education practice. Our contribution is to put forward a new idea for the ethics education in software engineering field.

The conflict raised by the title of this paper is familiar and may be considered too well worn to continue discussing? On the contrary, the fact that there is no serious resolution of this specific aspect of Software Engineering — despite many advances in software and software tools — suggests to these authors, both from general concern for the implications for the discipline as well as even greater concern for the teaching of software engineering students, that it is worth pursuing. The paper discusses the topic in general and also with particular reference to curricula. Experience in the School of Computer Science and Engineering at UNSW including attempts to address this problem are discussed.

Within the last few years constructivism has attracted both computer science and software engineer educators, because of its potential for improving academic learning. Currently, however, the application of constructivism is limited to examples in specific contexts so that it is difficult to transfer them to other institutions or even other courses. To apply effectively constructivism to software engineering and computer science education, instructors need a generic pedagogical model for translating constructivist principles into practice. This paper reports on the application of a pedagogical model for translating constructivism into a Web-based course in object-oriented software engineering.

NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract Main Menu Session 1526 Event-Driven Computing Projects for Software Engineering Education Marjorie Skubic and James Laffey Computer Engineering and Computer Science Department / School of Information Science and Learning Technologies University of Missouri-Columbia skubicm@missouri.edu / laffeyj@missouri.edu Abstract There is a growing need in the software industry for the development of systems with a dynamic, event-driven behavior, such as interactive human-computer interfaces, client-server architectures, and embedded systems. Developing successful, event-driven software requires a paradigm shift from traditional program development, and new curriculum approaches are needed to help computer science and engineering students develop competencies. In this paper, we describe an effort to address this problem through hands-on projects that provide experience in developing dynamic, event-driven systems and let the students physically see the results of their efforts. We describe our project testbed and exercises, based on the smart home theme, and report our experiences with using the testbed in an actual course setting. Although the proof of concept is being evaluated in a software engineering course, the project theme and testbed could be used in other computer-related courses, such as object-oriented programming, embedded systems, or even a first level computer science course. Introduction There is a growing need in the software industry for the development of systems with a dynamic, event-driven behavior, e.g., interactive human-computer interfaces, client-server architectures, and embedded systems1. Developing successful, event-driven software requires a paradigm shift from the traditional, sequential program development. Unlike sequential programs, event-driven software must work correctly in an environment with concurrent processes, uncertainties, and dynamic, external entities; indeed, the program may execute differently each time because of these outside effects. New curriculum approaches are needed to develop programming competencies for event- driven software 2. Students do not typically get significant experience in studying or developing event-driven software development. As a result, they have difficulties learning behavioral models for dynamic software systems and understanding the concepts necessary to design, program, and test such systems. To prepare students for their future careers as software engineers, they need experience in realistic projects that develop event-driven software 3. Proceedings of the 2002 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition. Copyright © 2002, American Society for Engineering Education Main Menu

Software Engineering is important for the students majored in computer science and technology. This curriculum is intended to provide students with an overall view over Software Engineering as an engineering discipline and with insight into the processes of software development. Creating software Engineering curriculum faces several challenges: (1) Software Engineering has wide coverage, but teaching time is limited. So it is difficult to make in-depth education. (2) Some introductory Software Engineering courses present the principles in isolation from practice. Teaching the lectures seems to focus on philosophy and methodology level, which leads to difficulty for students having no practical experience to understand. (3) Due to the lack of software project practice, students can hardly apply appropriate software engineering methods and technologies to solve problems. (4) How can Software Engineering curriculum satisfy the various needs of different levels? This paper focuses on the challenges above, and introduces how to try to solve them by a case study on the construction of Software Engineering curriculum at Peking University. Finally, this paper gives the future direction for the construction of Software Engineering curriculum.

A software engineering curriculum must provide the student with: a strong mathematical and theoretical base; problem solving and analysis skills; written and oral communication skills; knowledge of and experience in software engineering principles, processes, and products; knowledge of and experience in measurement, analysis, and control of software processes and products; and an understanding of applicable societal and ethical issues. To effectively address the needs of industry, software engineering education must include experience of applying software engineering principles to nontrivial problems. Here, the author describes how, in an environment of rapidly changing technology and limited educational budgets, delivering a sufficiently robust software engineering educational experience is a challenge.

The goals of computer science department and software engineering courses are not always clear as they could be, and exactly how much of a computer science curriculum should be spent on software engineering topics at the expense of topics with more immediate relevance to computer science majors is far from clear. Computer science students are sometimes skeptical about the relevance of software engineering course topics, particularly those who have had some experience in industry. They report that the techniques and procedures covered in standard software engineering texts are seldom used in industry. There is not enough communication between Industry and Academia, and graduates often must be re-trained for their new jobs. This is a proposal for a modification in the approach to software engineering education for computer science majors, and for clarification of the goals of computer science programs, and calls for procedures to increase the relevancy of computer science and software engineering courses to meet the needs of industry.

Modelling is one of the most difficult tasks of software engineering. UML (unified modelling language) is an object-oriented standard modelling language, which can express both the dynamic and static information during the processes of software analysis and design. Among the over 100 UML modelling tools, Rational Rose and Visio are the most extensively used ones. Here we comprehensively compare the performance of these two tools in software engineering teaching and discuss their advantages and disadvantages. The points presented in this review provide guidance for the selection of modelling tools and arrangement of teaching activities for software engineering.