Group Work in Software Engineering Classes

ABSTRACT This paper examines how a CASE tool [CorVision] is taught to a group of third year students in a Software Engineering class. It describes how the practical classes are set up to initiate students into the ways of industry by: • making students responsible for assessing part of their work and the benefits that accrue from that responsibility; • getting them to work in teams to complete different components of the practical work by certain deadlines; • developing a spirit of co-operation and engendering enthusiasm by recruiting students into the subject; • working through the associated problems group work can bring about. The paper then illustrates two particularly useful methods of presenting the tool to the students. The first method illustrates how an application is built by using a datashow toproject running examples onto a large screen. The second methodutilises the experience of people involved with the tool such as a developer and a user describing their interactions with the tool.