J. Paul Myers
ABSTRACT
As software engineering (SE) is becoming increasingly important as a discipline for computing professionals, so is it becoming an increasing emphasis in undergraduate computing education. The curricular revisions described here represent an attempt to incorporate SE principles throughout an undergraduate curriculum in Computer Science (CS). The emphasis here, however, is not one of wholesale overhaul into a SE program, possibly to the detriment of other strengths in the previous curriculum. Rather this is a non-radical augmentation and change of focus in certain aspects of a strong, but somewhat traditional CS curriculum.
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Index Terms
- Software engineering throughout a traditional computer science curriculum
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Software engineering throughout a traditional computer science curriculum
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Reviews
William J. Hankley
This paper begins with a discussion of the need for software engineering principles within computing curricula, such as Miles’ statement [1] that “... teaching a course in software engineering is insufficient. Software engineering techniques must be promoted across the curriculum.” What is not addressed is that these statements presume that the computer science program is oriented towards applied computing rather than pure science. The paper then describes how the computer science curriculum at Trinity University was reorganized to increase focus on software engineering. The key changes are: include SE focus within CS1 and CS2 courses, add a fundamentals of SE course in junior year, add a capstone, one year, team software engineering project course and add one hour professional seminars in sophomore through senior years. The beginning courses cover some aspects of design for small systems, the junior course covers design for large systems, and the seminars cover other issues of design, ethics, and software businesses. I agree that an effective senior project course requires the prior course in software engineering concepts. It should be noted that the curriculum does allow students to select a two semester senior thesis rather than the software project. Finally, the revised curriculum had been in place for two years. Myers notes that it is difficult to quantitatively assess effectiveness of the changes, other than that the faculty were pleased. Online Computing Reviews Service
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