Conference Session

Software Engineering Course Content

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Bruce Maxim, University of Michigan - Dearborn

Tagged Divisions

Software Engineering Constituent Committee

paper describes the author’s experiences with teaching an industry-based capstone designcourse. In this course, students work as members of small teams to complete softwaredevelopment projects. These projects proceed from requirements gathering, to analysis, design,implementation, and delivery of products to real-world clients. In recent years, several of theseprojects have involved the development of serious games for real-world clients. Serious gamesare games whose purpose is education in its various forms, rather than entertainment. Seriousgames and simulations can be good candidates for student projects that provide them withopportunities to manage projects with real-world development constraints and deadlines. A finalcumulative written

Conference Session

SE Curriculum and Course Management

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Joseph Clifton, University of Wisconsin-Platteville

Tagged Divisions

Software Engineering Constituent Committee

Page 13.105.10platform. The author is considering redoing the project in fall 2008 and treating the currentproduct as an extensive prototype. The question would again arise of whether or not it should bebuilt upon an existing framework such as Software Process Dashboard.AcknowledgementThe author would like to acknowledge the students in the software engineering capstone projectcourses that worked on the tool: Tim Bauman, Bryan Boyer, Aaron Carlson, Nate Edwards, WillFritz, Kyle Heins, Chris Herrick, Dennis Kalinowski, Gavin Kinsley, Nick Klauer, ScottMessner, Simon Polkowske, Bill Pyne, Dallas Ramsden, Eric Rice, Andy Schaumberg, KyleStangel, Chris Treml, Nate Weiss, and Aaron Westerdale.References[1] Clifton, J (2006), “Software Engineering

Conference Session

SE Curriculum and Course Management

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Joseph Clifton, University of Wisconsin-Platteville; Rob Hasker, University of Wisconsin-Platteville; Mike Rowe, University of Wisconsin-Platteville

Tagged Divisions

Software Engineering Constituent Committee

do bythe time of graduation.”3 Many are done in our year-long senior capstone project courses, SE4330 and SE 4730. In some cases, such as assessments for outcome A (Foundation), the studentsin the capstone courses are told that they will have an in-class assessment, but are not told whatthe assessment would be. They are told that the assessment will count as a small percentage oftheir grade, enough so that they take it seriously but not enough that they openly complain. Theyare also made aware of how important the assessment is to ABET accreditation.An example of a direct measurement that was used for B.2.b is the following question from theSE 4330 exam in fall 2007: An alternative project we discussed was to build a system for

Conference Session

SE Curriculum and Course Management

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Arthur Pyster, Stevens Institute of Technology; Devanandham Henry, Stevens Institute of Technology; Richard Turner, Stevens Institute of Technology; Kahina Lasfer, Stevens Institute of Technology; Lawrence Bernstein, Stevens Institute of Technology; Kristen Baldwin, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Acquisition, Technology, Logistics)

Tagged Divisions

Software Engineering Constituent Committee

which are required or semi-required. • Capstone practicums and projects are frequently required. While most programs offer a thesis option, students generally preferred the practicum or project.Developing the CurriculumIn the first meeting of the EST in August 2007, the team heard presentations on the SWEBOK,the Software Engineering Undergraduate Curriculum SE2004, SEIs 1991 Report on GraduateSwE Education, and the INCOSE Systems Engineering Graduate Curriculum Framework7 . Fromthese presentations and the initial results of the survey of existing graduate programs, the teamagreed to an outline for the curriculum document (Shown in Figure 2) and established four teamsto develop the main parts of the document – Guidance and

Conference Session

SE Curriculum and Course Management

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

J. Scott Hawker, Rochester Institute of Technology; Ian Webber, Rochester Institute of Technology; Michael Starenko, Rochester Institute of Technology; Jeremiah Parry-Hill, Rochester Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Software Engineering Constituent Committee

management system. This paper provides abackground of our vision and then presents our current system implementation, our initialexperiments and results, and planned next steps.Background - ProblemStudents and instructors are challenged to manage course content and integrate it across thecurriculum. For example, a student might take five courses a semester over eight semesters – 40courses. Especially for the courses in the student’s major, the content of these courses are relatedto content of previous courses, building on and integrating prior learning. Further, within a givencourse, there are numerous lectures, exercises, exams, and projects that interrelate. When astudent gets to their senior capstone design experience, they need to draw upon all