Ensuring Students Engage with Ethical and Professional Practice Concepts

The teaching and learning of aspects related to ethics and professional practice present significant challenges to both staff and students as these topics are much more abstract than say software design and testing. The core of this chapter is an in-depth examination of how ethics and professional practice can be addressed in a very practical manner. To set the scene and provide contextual information the chapter commences with information on an international model of professionalism, a code of ethics for Software Engineers, and different teaching and learning approaches that can be employed when addressing ethical issues. The major part of the chapter is then devoted to detailing a particular teaching and leaning approach, which has been developed at the University of Sunderland in the UK. Finally conclusions, views on the present situation and future developments, and details of outstanding challenges are presented.

Continuous Curriculum Restructuring in a Graduate Software Engineering Program

The development, maintenance and delivery of a software engineering curriculum present special challenges not found in other engineering disciplines. The continuous advances of the field of software engineering impose a high frequency of changes reflected in the curriculum and course content. This chapter describes the challenges of delivering a program meeting the needs of industry and students. It presents the lessons learned during 21 years of offering such a program, and dealing with issues pertaining to continuous curriculum and course content restructuring, the influence of the student body on the curriculum and course content. The chapter concludes with our recommendations for those who are seeking to create a graduate program in software engineering, with a special note on the situations where an undergraduate and graduate program will need to coexist in the same department.

Applying Blended Learning in an Industrial Context

With the rapid rate of innovation in software engineering, teaching and learning of new technologies have become challenging issues. The provision of appropriate education is a key prerequisite for benefiting from new technologies. Experience shows that typical classroom education is not as effective and efficient as it could be. E-learning approaches seem to be a promising solution but e-learning holds problems such as a lack of social communication or loose control on learning progress. This chapter describes a blended learning approach that mixes traditional classroom education with e-learning and that makes use of tightly integrated coaching activities. The concrete effects and enabling factors of this approach are discussed by means of an industrial case study. The results of the study indicate that following a blended learning approach has a positive impact on learning time, effectiveness and sustainability.

Novel Methods of Incorporating Security Requirements Engineering into Software Engineering Courses and Curricula

This chapter describes methods of incorporating security requirements engineering into software engineering courses and curricula. The chapter discusses the importance of security requirements engineering and the relationship of security knowledge to general computing knowledge by comparing a security body of knowledge to standard computing curricula. Then security requirements is related to standard computing curricula and educational initiatives in security requirements engineering are described, with their results. An expanded discussion of the SQUARE method in security requirements engineering case studies is included, as well as future plans in the area. Future plans include the development and teaching of academic course materials in security requirements engineering, which will then be made available to educators. The authors hope that more educators will be motivated to teach security requirements engineering in their software engineering courses and to incorporate it in their curricula.

Constructive Alignment in SE Education

Practitioner studies suggest that formal IT-related education is not developing the skills and knowledge needed by graduates in daily work. In particular, a shift in focus from technical competency to the soft and metacognitive skills is identified. This chapter argues that a framework for learning can be developed that more closely models the experiences of practitioners, and addresses their expectations of novice software engineers. Evaluation of a study incorporating three action research cycles shows that what is needed is a mapping between the characteristics of professional practice and the learning model that is applied. The research shows that a relationship also exists between learner and learning model, and that this relationship can be exploited in the development of competent discipline practitioners.

Software Engineering Education

There is a strong and growing global demand for skilled software engineers. The institutions that educate software engineers are evolving and changing to meet this need. This chapter provides an overview of this effort to develop software engineering education. It discusses the historical development of software engineering education, provides some perspective on current status, and identifies some of the challenges faced by software engineering educators. The intended audience for this chapter is anyone interested in software engineering education who has not participated in the developments to the present time. The goal is to provide a summary background of how the discipline has evolved and pointers to key publications that are part of that history. Since this chapter surveys foundational topics in software engineering education, many of the topics touched on in this chapter are covered in more detail in other chapters of this volume.

An International Perspective on Professional Software Engineering Credentials

This chapter provides an international perspective on professional software engineering credentials. It distinguishes between professional licensing, certification, and other forms of credentials. It compares and contrasts several major approaches to professional credentials: broad-based certifications, national examinations, and job frameworks. Examples of credentials in each category are discussed in detail. The chapter also discusses efforts to develop international standards for these credentials. The chapter concludes with a brief description of the current landscape of professional software engineering credentials.

How to Create a Credible Software Engineering Bachelor's Program

This chapter presents a case study in the development of a Software Engineering (SE) Bachelor’s Degree program. It outlines issues in SE program development, various means to address those issues, and explains how the issues were addressed in the initial and ongoing development of an undergraduate SE program. By using SEEK and SWEBOK as requirements sources to define what an undergraduate software engineer needs to know, the authors walk through the creation of a sample curriculum at a small, comprehensive university in the United States. Both the current and initial curricula are presented. The article discusses many items to consider in the process of planning and launching a new BSSE program, such as accreditation, curriculum guidelines, sources of information, and potential problems.

Teaching Software Engineering in a Computer Science Program Using the Affinity Research Group Philosophy

This chapter describes a two-semester software engineering course that is taught in a computer science program at the University of Texas at El Paso. The course is distinguished from other courses in that it is based on the Affinity Research Group (ARG) philosophy that focuses on the deliberate development of students’ team, professional and technical skills within a cooperative environment. To address the challenge of having to teach professional and team skills as well as software engineering principles, approaches, techniques, and tools in a capstone course, the authors have defined an approach that uses a continuum of instruction, practice, and application with constructive feedback loops. The authors hope that the readers will benefit from the description of the approach and how ARG components are incorporated into the course.

Tasks in Software Engineering Education

The field of software engineering is multifaceted. Accordingly, students must be educated to cope with different kinds of tasks and questions. This chapter describes a collection of tasks that aim at improving students’ skills in different ways. We illustrate our ideas by describing a course about human aspects of software engineering. The course objective is to increase learners’ awareness with respect to problems, dilemmas, ethical questions, and other human-related situations that students may face in the software engineering world. We attempt to achieve this goal by posing different kinds of questions and tasks to the learners, which aim at enhancing their abstract thinking and expanding their analysis perspectives. The chapter is based on our experience teaching the course at Carnegie-Mellon University and at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.