Fostering Entrepreneurship in Project-based Software Engineering Courses

Kevin Buffardi; David Rahn

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Conference: 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access
Location: Virtual On line
Publication Date: June 22, 2020
Start Date: June 22, 2020
End Date: June 26, 2021
Conference Session: ENT Division Technical Session: Entrepreneurship and IP
Tagged Division: Entrepreneurship & Engineering Innovation
Page Count: 15
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--34683
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/34683
Download Count: 487

Paper Authors

biography

Kevin Buffardi California State University, Chico

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Dr. Buffardi is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at California State University, Chico. After gaining industry experience as a usability and human factors engineering specialist, he earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Virginia Tech. His research concentrates on software engineering education, software testing, and eLearning tools.

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David Rahn California State University, Chico

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Mr. Rahn is a Lecturer for Strategy and Entrepreneurship and is the Director of the e-Incubator within the Center for entrepreneurship at California State University, Chico. Mr. Rahn has extensive industry background with software and consulting startups and specialized in new product and market development. Following his successful industry career Mr. Rahn transitioned to teaching strategy and entrepreneurship at Chico State. Over the past 16 years Mr. Rahn has developed the e-Incubator at Chico State, as well as created a course called Web-based entrepreneurship which focuses on helping students launch the online portion of their businesses using the Lean Startup approach. In 2016 he published "e-Business for Entrepreneurs," an online course for entrepreneurs building e-businesses.

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Abstract

Fostering Entrepreneurship in Project-Based Software Engineering Courses

The 2013 ASEE report on Transforming Undergraduate Engineering Education identified entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship as in-demand skills that require additional attention in engineering curricula for "expanding on business and economics acumen and enabling students to learn more than economic capitalization, but also the process of starting a business from an idea." Meanwhile, the technology sector is growing, led largely by software companies like Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet (parent of Google), and Facebook. Accordingly, many of the leading software companies emerged from a "tech startup" culture and through innovations from entrepreneurial software developers.

Software Engineering courses often follow Problem-Based Learning (PBL) pedagogy by involving students in semester-long software development projects. However, previous research has identified flaws in students developing “toy” projects of their own imagination. In particular, toy projects usually lack real customers and consequently cannot benefit from their feedback. Consequently, toy projects are ineffective at holding students accountable for adapting to changing requirements – a common characteristic to real life software development, and a primary inspiration for popular Agile Software Development methods. Similarly, Entrepreneurship courses often apply PBL pedagogy with business venture projects. While student entrepreneurs often propose software solutions for a market segment’s pain point they lack the programming skills to build the software ideas.

In 2016, we adopted the Tech Startup model by coordinating Entrepreneurship and Software Engineering classes by collaborating on novel software ideas. Unlike toy projects, Tech Startup projects leverage Entrepreneurship students to provide feedback and changing requirements as they learn Lean Startup methods. At the beginning of each semester, students from both classes participate in ideation activities and pitch ideas to form interdisciplinary teams to initiate software startups. However, in the initial semesters of the Tech Startup collaborations, nearly every project idea came from the Entrepreneurs. While those teams still benefitted from collaboration and a combination of Agile and Lean methodologies, we wanted to encourage Software Engineering students to also engage in the entrepreneurship.

In this study, we analyze seven semesters of a Software Engineering class (n=281)—a required class within an undergraduate Computer Science program—to investigate Software Engineering students’ motivations and attitudes for creating entrepreneurial ideas. We study pre-semester surveys that gather students’ preferences for projects as well as their motivations for ranking their preferences. We also examine the effects of fostering Software Engineering students to pitch entrepreneurial ideas by prompting ideation with an introduction to two emerging technology platforms: virtual/augmented reality (VR/AR) and internet of things (IoT).

In this paper we evaluate motivations for Software Engineers to engage in generating innovative, entrepreneurial ideas and how they may influence students’ engagement and experiences in a Tech Startup project. We also discuss our initial concern that Entrepreneurship students may not be interested in pursuing project ideas initiated by Software Engineering students. However, our study found that some entrepreneurs were keenly interested in participating in projects ideas conceived by software engineers.

Citation
Format

Buffardi, K., & Rahn, D. (2020, June), Fostering Entrepreneurship in Project-based Software Engineering Courses Paper presented at 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual On line . 10.18260/1-2--34683

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Fostering Entrepreneurship in Project-Based Software Engineering Courses

The 2013 ASEE report on Transforming Undergraduate Engineering Education identified entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship as in-demand skills that require additional attention in engineering curricula for &quot;expanding on business and economics acumen and enabling students to learn more than economic capitalization, but also the process of starting a business from an idea.&quot; Meanwhile, the technology sector is growing, led largely by software companies like Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet (parent of Google), and Facebook. Accordingly, many of the leading software companies emerged from a &quot;tech startup&quot; culture and through innovations from entrepreneurial software developers.

Software Engineering courses often follow Problem-Based Learning (PBL) pedagogy by involving students in semester-long software development projects. However, previous research has identified flaws in students developing “toy” projects of their own imagination. In particular, toy projects usually lack real customers and consequently cannot benefit from their feedback. Consequently, toy projects are ineffective at holding students accountable for adapting to changing requirements – a common characteristic to real life software development, and a primary inspiration for popular Agile Software Development methods. Similarly, Entrepreneurship courses often apply PBL pedagogy with business venture projects. While student entrepreneurs often propose software solutions for a market segment’s pain point they lack the programming skills to build the software ideas. 

In 2016, we adopted the Tech Startup model by coordinating Entrepreneurship and Software Engineering classes by collaborating on novel software ideas. Unlike toy projects, Tech Startup projects leverage Entrepreneurship students to provide feedback and changing requirements as they learn Lean Startup methods. At the beginning of each semester, students from both classes participate in ideation activities and pitch ideas to form interdisciplinary teams to initiate software startups. However, in the initial semesters of the Tech Startup collaborations, nearly every project idea came from the Entrepreneurs. While those teams still benefitted from collaboration and a combination of Agile and Lean methodologies, we wanted to encourage Software Engineering students to also engage in the entrepreneurship.

In this study, we analyze seven semesters of a Software Engineering class (n=281)—a required class within an undergraduate Computer Science program—to investigate Software Engineering students’ motivations and attitudes for creating entrepreneurial ideas. We study pre-semester surveys that gather students’ preferences for projects as well as their motivations for ranking their preferences. We also examine the effects of fostering Software Engineering students to pitch entrepreneurial ideas by prompting ideation with an introduction to two emerging technology platforms: virtual/augmented reality (VR/AR) and internet of things (IoT). 

In this paper we evaluate motivations for Software Engineers to engage in generating innovative, entrepreneurial ideas and how they may influence students’ engagement and experiences in a Tech Startup project. We also discuss our initial concern that Entrepreneurship students may not be interested in pursuing project ideas initiated by Software Engineering students. However, our study found that some entrepreneurs were keenly interested in participating in projects ideas conceived by software engineers.
 


AU  - Kevin Buffardi
AU  - David Rahn
CY  - Virtual On line 
DA  - 2020/06/22
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Fostering Entrepreneurship in Project-based Software Engineering Courses
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/34683
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--34683
ER  -