Can graduating students design: revisited

Abstract

In this paper we revisit previous research to elaborate on the question: "Can graduating students design software systems?" The work concluded that the answer was "not really". We wished to determine if this was true currently at our institution and also to look at whether students were able to design software in groups, and evaluate others' designs. In summary, it appears that our students, just as in the original experiment, struggle with doing design, even in a group situation. The representation of behavioral design was particularly lacking. That said, students were able to recognize weaknesses when evaluating other group designs. Based on our findings, we provide several pedagogic recommendations.