Re: Software Engineering Education

[agate!spool.mu.edu!tulane!uno.edu!JNCS@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU]

In article <20600125@inmet>, ryer@inmet.camb.inmet.com writes:
>    25% - Quality (correctness) of the executable program
>    25% - Quality of the written design document
>    25% - Quality of the written test plan and procedures
>    25% - Quality of the user documentation
>
>I thought this was the most intelligent approach I'd ever heard.  Do any
>of you educators have a better idea?  Is this done in other universities?
>
>Mike Ryer
>Intermetrics

When I teach software development courses of any level I break the grade on
the following aspects :
	i. Documentation
        2. Format of code
        3. Design of algorithm
        4. Implementation
        5. Completeness of implementation
        6. Correctness
        7. Output

Their weight is based on level of course and complexity of problem at hand.
This grading supports development of code that can be read and maintained,
vs code that works and produces a correct answer. Usually, correctness and
output do not exceed on more than 2o-25%. Thus there may be program which
are acceptable but may not produce correct output; acceptability is determined
by the other factors. 
I feel I must mentioned that Implementation considers the proper (not just
correct) use of control structures, and abstraction tools as provided by
Ada. (Example, use of For when it should be a While, procedures where functions
,
use of constants, type definitions, etc...)

Jaime Nino
Computer Science Department
University of New Orleans
New Orleans, La 70148