A retrospective on an early software projects course

3. Major Course Themes Despite increasing auention to software engineering education, there is no consensus yet about which elements of software engineering should be included in an undergraduate program. Nor is there consensus about how to teach those elements that are included in a specific program. Many researchers have either discussed software engineering as a discipline or reported on efforts 10 introduce software engineering into the Wldergraduate curriculum (references [1-8,10-11,13·14] are a selection of efforts in these areas). The most common model seems to be a single, upper-level course in which the basic principles of software engineering are taught, and then reinforced by a large team project. lames Tomayko [12] and Linda Northrop [9], for example, have reported success in teaching large project courses of this type. PSW, while not tilled as such, has emerged as a software engineering course, but unlike others reported upon in the literature. In order to Wlderstand the course, we need to look at the background our students typicaUy bring to the course. In the first two years of our program, students receive a thorough introduction to modem programming practice, doing most of their work in Modula-2. During the intermediate years of their program, they begin co-op and take a variety of other important computer courses covering topics in operating systems, file structures, and data communications. Henry A. Etlinger Rochester Institute of Technology School of Computer Science and Infonnation Technology One Lomb Memorial Drive/Box 9887 Rochester. New York 14623-0887 Internet: hae@cs.riledu I Bitnet: haeicS@ritvax