Teaching an Object-Oriented Software Development Lifecycle in Undergraduate Software Engineering Education

1
Teaching an Object-Oriented Software Development
Lifecycle in Undergraduate Software Engineering
Education

• February 27, 2002
• Professor Brian Blake
• Georgetown University

2
Presentation Agenda

• Motivation for this Teaching Approach
• Two-Course Teaching Approach
• Innovation of this Approach
• Course Details
• Results and Future Courses

3
Initial Problems

• Horizontal and Vertical specialization is
  unrealistic in one semesters timeframe
• Breadth of OO software development topics
• Software and systems issues, database systems, OO
  models, programming languages, networking, GUI
• Depth of necessary knowledge for project
  management
• Communication and Collaboration Skills
• Role-based concerns paired with Domain analysis
  issues

4
Problems (continued)

• How can students be, at least, introduced to all
  aforementioned concerns ?
• Can students understand cross-functional
  collaboration and concerns ?
• How can soft-skills be introduced without losing
  the technical focus?
• How can a real programming project be integrated
  within the time constraints?

5
A Two-Course Approach

• We take a Two course approach
• Software Engineering I
• Focus on
• Domain analysis and requirements elicitation
• Software analysis, design, and modeling
• Introduction to developmental technical issues
• Cross-functional technical issues
• Software Engineering II
• OO Software Development Lifecycle and concerns
• Briefly, software engineering issues
  (reliability, traceability, etc.)
• Semester-long simulation that culminates all
  training

6
Other Relevant Approaches

• This approach is application development-
  intensive
• Other similar approaches
• Software-enacted Simulation (References in Paper)
• The Real World Lab at Georgia Institute of
  Technology
• The Studio at Carnegie Mellon University
• PSP/TSP Training

7
Uniqueness of this Approach

• Students focus on analysis/design and application
  development independently
• Project contained within a semester
• Students can experience the entire lifecycle
• Other Lab-based approaches give a snapshot
• Use and enforce industry-standard modeling
  techniques

8
Uniqueness of this approach

• Like PSP/TSP
• Focus on team-based collaboration
• Build collaboration skills in context of software
  development
• In Addition
• In context of a full semester as opposed to
  week-long course
• An actual software application is developed
• Organizational roles are instituted
• Team and Project level collaboration

9
Team/Project-level Collaboration
10
Topics in Software Engineering I
11
Software Engineering II Syllabus
12
Class Organization in Software Eng II
13
Concept of Evolving Roles

• Stolen from the operation of Small-to-Medium
  (SME) organizations
• Teams and individuals have to extend further than
  there pre-defined roles in order to cover all
  developmental areas
• We have come up with a way to utilize students in
  multiple roles for all of the developmental
  activities
• Role assignments are consistent with student
  career goals and desires

14
Evolving Roles
15
Course Results and Evaluation

• Students were very fond of the course
• Evaluations were lt 4.5 (5 point scale)
• SEI(Fall1999) 18 students,SEI(Fall2000) 20
  students
• SEII(Spring 2001) 14 students
• Students took ownership of the project
• Industry participated in development process and
  results(The MITRE Corporation)
• Alumni students were pleased with the big picture
  perspective and breadth of topics

16
Future Plans

• Students tend to meet in groups twice week by
  there own ad-hoc meetings
• Evaluating the feasibility of a 4th hour as lab
  time in Software Engineering II
• Next Software Engineering II
• Air-Traffic Simulation-based project