The Continuing Challenge of Delivering SE Content to CS Majors

Abstract

Summary form only given. During the last 20 years, the software engineering (SE) education community has focused much of its effort in developing undergraduate degree programs in the discipline. However, far more software is created and maintained by computer science (CS) graduates and other individuals who do not possess a degree in software engineering. Therefore, it is critical that the amount of space available in an undergraduate computer science curriculum to deliver content from the SE knowledge area be used in the most effective manner possible. Most computer science curricula confine their study of software engineering to a single course, sometimes not taken until a CS major's final year of study -- right before doing a one-term capstone project. Meeting the task of delivering such a course to the satisfaction of students, faculty and external stakeholders has been one that has been an ongoing challenge to many computer science programs. This talk will look at the evolution of the introductory software engineering course and discuss how that challenge might be met within the guidelines of the ACM/IEEE-CS Computer Science Curriculum 2013 (CS2013).