Encapsulating empirical practices within the software engineering curriculum

One of the factors limiting the wider acceptance of computer science (and hence software engineering) as a 'Science and Engineering' discipline is the lack of established experimental practices that can be used to provide empirical support for our ideas. While such techniques do exist, they are not widely known, and do not usually appear in any curricula. This paper described an introductory course on empirical practices that we taught to our final year undergraduate students, and provides a simple 'case study' illustration of our experiences.