Teaching Protocol Engineering in Honours Year

Protocol engineering is a branch of software engineering involved in the rigorous design, specification, verification, implementation and testing of communication protocols using formal methods. Teaching of protocol engineering in honours year (fourth year of the undergraduate course) at La Trobe University is conducted both by formal lectures and project supervision. A course by the name of “Protocol Engineering” has been taught since 1989. Students in their honours year have to do a substantial project under the supervision of a lecturer. This paper discusses the structure of the course, the experience of supervising honours projects in protocol engineering, and the improvements to be made in the future.