English

Software Engineering for Millennials, by Millennials

Computers and Society 2018-04-11 v1 Software Engineering

Abstract

Software engineers need to manage both technical and professional skills in order to be successful. Our university offers a 5.5 year program that mixes computer science, software and computer engineering, where the first two years are mostly math and physics courses. As such, our students' first real teamwork experience is during the introductory SE course, where they modify open source projects in groups of 6-8. However, students have problems working in such large teams, and feel that the course material and project are "disconnected". We decided to redesign this course in 2017, trying to achieve a balance between theory and practice, and technical and professional skills, with a maximum course workload of 150 hrs per semester. We share our experience in this paper, discussing the strategies we used to improve teamwork and help students learn new technologies in a more autonomous manner. We also discuss what we learned from the two times we taught the new course.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1804.03518,
  title  = {Software Engineering for Millennials, by Millennials},
  author = {Jocelyn Simmonds and Maíra Marques Samary and Milenko Tomic and Francisco Madrid and Constanza Escobar},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1804.03518},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

8 pages, 9 tables, 4 figures, Second International Workshop on Software Engineering Education for Millennials