Teaching software-engineering concepts through industrially used tools early in the undergraduate curriculum

摘要

This paper reports on an established course, running successfully for six years at Swansea University, Wales, UK. In this course carefully selected software engineering concepts (SECs) are taught to first year undergraduate students whose programming background consists of only one introductory course on programming (in Java). This course is also part of a work-based learning programme aimed at industry and is being taken by full-time employees from private companies. Due to the students' limited programming background in both programmes, the selected SECs need to be demonstrable in a programming-in-the-small setting. Challenges to teaching SECs at such an early stage include: Challenge C1: due to the students' limited ability to think abstractly, students need hands-on experience to understand SECs. Challenge C2: due to the students' limited programming experience, students are critical of SECs and require convincing arguments that the taught SECs are relevant. Our pedagogical approach to address these challenges is (a) to run a lab-centered course and (b) to let students see the "real thing" as often as possible.