Introducing Software Engineering to the Freshman Student

摘要

With most of the software engineering curriculum settings, the first Software Engineering course is not offered early enough to give the students a good overview of what software engineering is, in their early stage of study. It is not only unbeneficial to stimulate students' interest in software engineering, but also hinders the success of retaining the students in the program. This paper describes a new freshmen level course - SE 102 Introduction to Software Engineering - that uses a hands-on setting to introduce freshman students to the beauty of software engineering. The authors design a semester long hands-on project using robotics to expose the students to the major software development phases, including requirements analysis, design, implementation, and testing. This paper outlines the approach and structure of the course, and presents the evaluation methods for assessing the course effectiveness. This course is intended to boost students' motivation and interest in software engineering, and improve the program's recruitment and retention rates. Due to its generic design, this course can be seamlessly adapted to other software engineering programs in peer institutions.