Software engineering education for a graduate course: A web‐based tool for conducting process improvement initiatives with local industry collaboration

In recent years, there has been an on‐going demand for better services and functionality in software products; as a consequence many models, techniques, and tools have been developed such as CMMI‐DEV v1.2, TSP, or Scrum. However, software products still suffer from excessive costs, delays in delivery, and low quality. Furthermore, there is a lack of educational material providing high levels of interaction between students and the software industry to learn about how enterprises adopt these models, techniques, and tools into their daily work. This article describes a web‐based Tool (EduSysProVAL) to support a graduate course in collaboration with the local software industry. The main goal of this research is to demonstrate that a Software Engineering course may use the EduSysProVAL tool to improve students' practical and professional skills, thus increasing their participation and effort in improvement initiatives, in comparison to traditional educational approaches which are only based on theory classes. This research uses a four‐category questionnaire and follow‐up interviews to evaluate a satisfactory level of tool effectiveness with undergraduate students and summarizes the industry's positive perceptions about its contribution to the course. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 23:117–136, 2015; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/cae; DOI 10.1002/cae.21584

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