A Survey of Software Engineering Courses, Study notes of Software Engineering

Download A Survey of Software Engineering Courses and more Study notes Software Engineering in PDF only on Docsity! A SURVEY OF SOFTWARE ENGINEERING COURSES A.A.J. Hoffman, Director, Computer Science Program, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, Texas 76129 Together with the recent, rapid growth in numbers of technical papers, survey articles, symposia, conferences, and books, there is also a corresponding increase in software engineering education activities. In order to obtain some insight into the number and nature of course offerings, Peter Freeman of the University of Cali- fornia, Irvine, published a survey form in early 1977 in both the ACM Software Engineering Notes and the IEEE TC/SE News- letter. Figure 1 replicates this survey form. Most responses were received by April, 1977. Recently, Peter Freem~n forwarded these responses to A.A.J. Hoffman of Texas Christian Universit I for analysis and reporting. There were a total of 28 responses from 26 traditional educational institu- tions, offering regular and special courses, industrial organizations, and professional development companies. Table 1 is a list of the organizations represented by survey respondents. While most responses came from the United States, others originated in France, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The majority of the respondents simple returned the completed survey form, while others submitted course outlines and brochures. Software Engineering was the most popular course title (used by ten different organiz- ations). There were two each with titles of Introduction to Software Engineering, Software Design,--an~-'~6ed Software SyStem Design. The compl~list of course titles is as shown in Table 2. Items 3 and 4 on the survey requested course level (beginning, intermediate or advanced) and type (undergraduate, graduate, professional development, manu- facturer). The tabulation of responses to items 3 and 4 are shown in Table 3. Most courses are shown to be inter- mediate to advanced graduate, although the bulk of the undergraduate offerings are listed as intermediate. The latter result appears to be inconsistent. All the respondents (28) offer courses in lecture form with eight indicating concurrent laboratory. Eight titles are offered as seminars both in conjunction with a lecture series and by themselves. No respondents indicated offer~na a speaker series. The rapid growth in courses is shown by responses to the "date first offered" item. No courses were listed as beginning prior to 1972. In that year only two were offered. Table 4 shows the rapid growth in course starts from 1972, with 2, to 1977, with 8 starts. Most responses indicated that offerings were repeated 1 to 12 times. The institutions of higher education Offer courses each semester while professional development groups offer courses more frequently. It appears that all courses are offered repeatedly and regularly once initiated. Furthermore, they are well attended. Some classes average 90 students, while others average as low as 5. The most prevalent size average is in the range of 20 to 25 students. The length of the offerings ranged from one four hour session to a 15-week one semester university class, meeting one hour, three times each week plus laboratory. Most fall into the latter category. The shorter courses (3 to 10 weeks) tend to be most intense with some scheduling 6 or 7 hours of class per day. It is of interest to note that in almost every case the persons listed as instructors also are course developers. The course materials listed include text- books, lecture notes, and reprints of technical articles. Reprints are the most prevalent course material used, with a range of one to 30 reprints per class. The average number of reprints used was four. A few instructors indicated use of visual aids and audio cassettes. Some outside speakers were also indicated. The required work for semester courses typically included a series of readings, four or five programs, and a term paper. One class offered by D.J. Reifer of UCLA includes a discussion topic each session during which contro- versial issues are debated. Anita Jones 80 of Carnegie-Mellon University uses dif- ferent teams of three students each to create, test and modify each other team's work. Although most respondents reported that courses were still in early stages of development, all are pleased with their courses and the response of the students. One problem encountered by several instructors was that of introducing real world problems and applications into the course. One instructor suggested separ- ating real and applied methodologies into two courses. Many respondents like to spend as much time as possible in testing. CONCLUSIONS The rapid growth of software engineering precludes any formal status report based on data over one year old. Furthermore, it is not clear to what extent this survey reached or was returned by any reasonable percentage of the potential respondents. Nevertheless, the survey shows that a wide range of software engineering courses are available, that most respondents offer only one course, no one offerer has a "complete" set, and that no formal degree programs entitled "soft- ware engineering" are listed. RECOMMENDATIONS There is a real and urgent need to deceminate detailed information about software engineering education to text- book authors, curriculum developers, etc. Using the results of this survey as a basis, a new survey should be prepared and distributed to a widely diverse constituancy of potential respondents. Also, the results of the survey should be made available more quickly than this survey. 81