Re: Software Engineering Education

[weyrich!orville@uunet.uu.net (Orville R. Weyrich)]

In article <1505@screamer.csee.usf.edu> stelmack@screamer.csee.usf.edu (Gregory
 M. Stelmack) writes:
>
>2) Teaching Software Engineering Concepts in classes: I think the greatest
>hindrance to this is that students are taking several classes at once, and
>many are working to help pay for school (me, for one). Students simply don't
>have the time to do the kind of major projects that allow the teaching and
>experience of what has been called "macro-SE" here. One way that USF does get

What you are really saying is that your school has not designed their
curriculum to support macro-SE. It would be terribly burdensome on the
students if each professor "got the religion" and decided to put a good
macro-SE experience into his/her courses. The proper way to do this is to
pick out some REQUIRED course or course sequence and to put the macro-SE
into that course (sequence) ONLY. And warn the students that they should not
expect to take 3 programming courses concurrently with that course (sequence).
All this requires planning at the department level, and coordination of the
implementation.

>this to some students is by allowing some undergraduates to get in on research
>projects. In this way, the undergraduate gets a part-time job working in with
>other programmers, an experience that naturally teaches much about SE (as well
>as a good deal about whatever the research project is on). Maybe if more of
>these kinds of positions were offered, more undergraduates will get that
>experience. But, if an undergraduate has to work a non-computer job, that
>student will be scrimping for time, and is forced to throw a program together
>in a few hours for a class to get it in on time.

While a curriculum committee should take student convenience into account,
there is a definite limit to how much the program should be compromised to
accomodate students' work schedules. The program should be designed to 
provide a full-time student [without distractions] a quality education in
4 years. Those students that have distractions should expect to have to 
reduce their course load and take longer.



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Orville R. Weyrich, Jr., Ph.D.                   Certified Systems Professional
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