Teaching Software Engineering Tools to Undergraduate Students

Abstract

Today, software development is characterized by keywords such as collaborative, teamwork, distributed, agile, dynamic, qualitative and tool-supported among many others. In this paper, we present our experience in teaching three software development tools often used in industry in a software engineering course for undergraduate students: GitHub, SonarQube, and Microsoft Project. The main reasons behind the use of these tools during the development of a software project were: (1) students become familiar with examples of tools adopted in industry and academia, (2) students are enabled to collaborate in teams for the achievement of a common goal, and (3) students become aware of the management tasks needed by a project developed in teams. We exploited these tools in the software engineering course in the last three academic years. The students feedback on using these tools gathered through a questionnaire was positive. Students were enthusiastic in learning about new tools and their support for software development and management. In this paper we summarize the students feedback during three academic years and the lessons we have learned from their feedback.