Learning Software Industry Practices With Open Source and Free Software Tools

Software Engineering Course

Our undergraduate SE course includes a semester-long (about 14 weeks) software development project to provide students hands-on experience with processes, methods, techniques, and tools of software development. The course first provides the necessary theoretical foundation for a broad range of topics – software engineering process models, project management, software requirements elicitation and specification, use case modeling, UML, object-oriented analysis and design, design patterns, test-driven development, version control, system building, software testing, mock object frameworks, software maintenance, software internationalization, SE ethics, and writing skills. Though the topics are quite a few, very focused and conceptually oriented lectures make this task possible. Students gain practical aspects of these topics by working on a realistic project in a team environment.

Students begin the course by writing a short formal paper on a SE ethics topic. The semester-long project involves development of a software product using an iterative and incremental development model. Students use Eclipse IDE (n.d.), and several free and open source tools and plugins available for the Eclipse IDE. The product is delivered incrementally in three releases with each release taking roughly 4 weeks of effort. The course also includes a midterm, a final exam, and several quizzes as part of formative and summative assessments. The weight distribution of various components in the course is: term paper (10%), ethics writing assignment (5%), term project (30%), midterm exam (20%), final exam (25%), and quizzes (10%).