Techniques for providing software engineering education to working professionals

Abstract

As the pace of change of technology increases, software engineering professionals are experiencing a pressure to maintain currency in recent developments in the software engineering field. Providing effective education to this population of working professionals is of increasing importance. This paper is an initial investigation of effective education techniques that may be employed when teaching working professionals. The paper will attempt to answer two main questions: 1) What techniques does prior research indicate might be effective in teaching working professionals? 2) How might these techniques be employed in software engineering courses for working professionals? Survey-based feedback from prior software courses taught to working professionals will be used to provide baseline insight into techniques in current courses and to suggest directions for future efforts. This feedback is taken from multiple courses taught to adult working professional students spanning several semesters and two U.S. institutions.