research-article

Evaluating an early software engineering course with projects and tools from open source software

Authors:

Robert McCartney,

Swapna S. Gokhale,

Thérèse M. SmithAuthors Info & Claims

ICER '12: Proceedings of the ninth annual international conference on International computing education research

Pages 5 - 10

https://doi.org/10.1145/2361276.2361279

Published: 09 September 2012 Publication History

Get Access

Abstract

We developed a software engineering course that emphasizes code maintenance and evolution by having students reverse engineer and modify open-source projects. To evaluate whether this course had the desired effects on student learning, we analyze pre- and post-course survey data using qualitative methods. This analysis, in combination with other data, suggests that the students gained an appreciation and understanding of software maintenance, documentation, and tool use.

References

[1]

A. Baker, E. O. Navarro, and A. van der Hoek. An experimental card game for teaching software engineering processes. Journal of Systems and Software, 75(1--2):3--16, 2005.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[2]

V. Braun and V. Clarke. Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2):77--101, 2006.

Crossref

Google Scholar

[3]

S. Canada. Statistics canada. http://www.statcan.gc.ca/start-debut-eng.html, 2012.

Google Scholar

[4]

C.-Y. Chen and P. P. Chong. Software engineering education: A study on conducting collaborative senior project development. Journal of Systems and Software, 84(3):479--491, 2011.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[5]

T. Hainey, T. M. Connolly, M. Stansfield, and E. A. Boyle. Evaluation of a game to teach requirements collection and analysis in software engineering at tertiary education level. Computers & Education, 56(1):21--35, 2011.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[6]

Y.-J. Lee. Empowering teachers to create educational software: A constructivist approach utilizing etoys, pair programming and cognitive apprenticeship. Computers & Education, 56(2):527--538, 2011.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[7]

T. C. Lethbridge, S. E. Sim, and J. Singer. Studying software engineers: Data collection techniques for software field studies. Empirical Software Engineering, 10:311--341, 2005.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[8]

R. Marmorstein. Open source contribution as an effective software engineering class project. In Proceedings of the 16th annual joint conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education, ITiCSE '11, pages 268--272, New York, NY, USA, 2011. ACM.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[9]

J. Nandigam, V. Gudivada, and A. Hamou-Lhadj. Learning software engineering principles using open source software. In 38th Ann. Frontiers in Education Conference, pages S3H-18-S3H-23, 2008.

Crossref

Google Scholar

[10]

Object Management Group. Unified modeling language. http://www.uml.org/, 1997. viewed on April 16, 2012.

Google Scholar

[11]

D. Pfahl, O. Laitenberger, G. Ruhe, J. Dorsch, and T. Krivobokova. Evaluating the learning effectiveness of using simulations in software project management education: results from a twice replicated experiment. Information and Software Technology, 46(2):127--147, 2004.

Crossref

Google Scholar

[12]

J. Sillito. Saturate application. http://www.saturateapp.com/.

Google Scholar

Cited By

View all

Gallagher KFioravanti MKozaitis S(2019)Teaching Software Maintenance2019 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME)10.1109/ICSME.2019.00054(353-362)Online publication date: Sep-2019
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSME.2019.00054
Hu ZSong YGehringer ELago PYoung M(2018)Open-source software in classProceedings of the 40th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training10.1145/3183377.3183394(40-48)Online publication date: 27-May-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3183377.3183394
Holmes RAllen MCraig MLago PYoung M(2018)Dimensions of experientialism for software engineering educationProceedings of the 40th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training10.1145/3183377.3183380(31-39)Online publication date: 27-May-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3183377.3183380
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Evaluating an early software engineering course with projects and tools from open source software
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education
        Information science education
    2. Management of computing and information systems
      1. Software management
        Software maintenance
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software post-development issues

Recommendations

Reverse engineering: a roadmap
ICSE '00: Proceedings of the Conference on The Future of Software Engineering
Selecting open source software projects to teach software engineering
SIGCSE '14: Proceedings of the 45th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education

Aspiring software engineers must be able to comprehend and evolve legacy code, which is challenging because the code may be poorly documented, ill structured, and lacking in human support. These challenges of understanding and evolving existing code can ...
A Survey of Software Engineering Practice: Tools, Methods, and Results

The results of a survey of software development practice are reported and analyzed. The problems encountered in various phases of the software life cycle are measured and correlated with characteristics of the responding installations. The use and ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

ICER '12: Proceedings of the ninth annual international conference on International computing education research

September 2012

174 pages

ISBN:9781450316040

DOI:10.1145/2361276

General Chairs:
Alison Clear
CPIT, Christchurch, NZ
,
Kate Sanders
Rhode Island College, Providence, USA
,
Beth Simon
USD, San Diego, USA

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 09 September 2012

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Conference

ICER '12

Sponsor:

SIGCSE

ICER '12: International Computing Education Research Conference

September 9 - 11, 2012

Auckland, New Zealand

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 189 of 803 submissions, 24%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

9
Total Citations
View Citations
273
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)4
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

Reflects downloads up to 24 Oct 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all

Gallagher KFioravanti MKozaitis S(2019)Teaching Software Maintenance2019 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME)10.1109/ICSME.2019.00054(353-362)Online publication date: Sep-2019
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSME.2019.00054
Hu ZSong YGehringer ELago PYoung M(2018)Open-source software in classProceedings of the 40th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training10.1145/3183377.3183394(40-48)Online publication date: 27-May-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3183377.3183394
Holmes RAllen MCraig MLago PYoung M(2018)Dimensions of experientialism for software engineering educationProceedings of the 40th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training10.1145/3183377.3183380(31-39)Online publication date: 27-May-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3183377.3183380
Aycock JDhanjal SAhmed F(2016)Code ProtectionProceedings of the 21st Western Canadian Conference on Computing Education10.1145/2910925.2910929(1-5)Online publication date: 6-May-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2910925.2910929
Ellis HHislop GJackson SPostner L(2015)Team Project Experiences in Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software (HFOSS)ACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/268481215:4(1-23)Online publication date: 9-Dec-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2684812
Smith TGokhale SMcCartney RCajander ÅDaniels MClear TPears A(2014)Understanding students' preferences of software engineering projectsProceedings of the 2014 conference on Innovation & technology in computer science education10.1145/2591708.2591753(135-140)Online publication date: 21-Jun-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2591708.2591753
Smith TMcCartney RGokhale SKaczmarczyk LDougherty JNagel KDecker AEiselt K(2014)Selecting open source software projects to teach software engineeringProceedings of the 45th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education10.1145/2538862.2538932(397-402)Online publication date: 5-Mar-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2538862.2538932
Nascimento DCox KAlmeida TSampaio WBittencourt RSouza RChavez C(2013)Using Open Source Projects in software engineering education: A systematic mapping study2013 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE.2013.6685155(1837-1843)Online publication date: Oct-2013
https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2013.6685155
Gokhale SSmith TMcCartney R(2013)Teaching software maintenance with open source software: Experiences and lessons2013 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE.2013.6685121(1664-1670)Online publication date: Oct-2013
https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2013.6685121

View Options

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Cited By

Index Terms

Recommendations

Reverse engineering: a roadmap

Selecting open source software projects to teach software engineering

A Survey of Software Engineering Practice: Tools, Methods, and Results

Comments

Published In

Sponsors

Publisher

Publication History

Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Conference

Acceptance Rates

Other Metrics

Article Metrics

Other Metrics

Cited By

Login options

Full Access

PDF

eReader

Abstract

References

Cited By

Index Terms

Recommendations

Reverse engineering: a roadmap

Selecting open source software projects to teach software engineering

A Survey of Software Engineering Practice: Tools, Methods, and Results

Comments

Information

Published In

Sponsors

Publisher

Publication History

Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Conference

Acceptance Rates

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Get Access

Login options

Full Access

View options

PDF

eReader

Figures

Other

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media

Affiliations