Effective Use of Student Projects in Teaching Software Engineering

Abstract

Software Engineering education aims at providing the students with all the required technical, organizational and social skills to deal with the cumbersome task of development as well as to survive the complicated situations in software development industry. The perspective software engineers need to be prepared for the volatile environment of the industry, where decisions are made in real time and things do not go as smooth and pre-planned as the students experience them in the controlled environment of academic institutions. Being researchers and instructors of software engineering at public sector universities, the authors are able to see the problems due to which the perspective software engineers are unable to thrive in the software development industry. This research has been conducted as a pilot study for a project aiming at reforming software engineering teaching and education in Pakistan. The study highlights the problems in software engineering education in general by providing an analytical review of different models and frameworks for teaching project-based software engineering capstone courses. All of these models and frameworks are designed and tested in order to have improved learning outcome of software engineering courses. The aim of presenting this literature review is to identify a proper teaching model best suited to teach project-based software engineering capstone courses in Pakistan.