Integrated Active Learning Tools for Enhanced Pedagogy in a Software Engineering Course

Effective teaching requires effective teaching tools. This pedagogical requirement is especially important for software engineering education, where graduates are expected to develop software that meets rigorous quality standards in functional and application domains. To enhance students’ understanding of the needs of the professional software industry, lecture notes are supplanted by additional pedagogical tools being developed at the author’s institution for a software verification and validation (V&V) course. These active learning teaching tools, consisting of class exercises, case studies, and case study videos, are being developed in partnership with industry. The basic objective of the project is to improve software education so that it is aligned with both academic research and industry best practices. This project is being funded through a NSF-TUES grant. Through this project in addition to enhancing twenty (20) delivery hours of lecture slides, eighteen (18) delivery hours of case studies, sixteen (16) delivery hours of exercises, and six (6) delivery hours of case study videos totaling sixty (60) delivery hours of Software V&V course modules are being created. In the spring of 2014, diverse case studies were delivered to Software Engineering juniors at the author’s institution and their learning outcomes were tracked using a survey instrument. The results showed that the students were able to better comprehend V&V topics such as requirements engineering, reviews and inspections, configuration management, and testing. The knowledge disseminated through lectures seemed to be reinforced by the case studies. In the spring of 2015, additional course materials that include exercises and role-play videos are expected to be created and delivered. The results of this research work will be shared during the poster presentation at ASEE. As part of the project dissemination plan, the teaching materials will be made available to interested institutions and professional organizations. An invitation-only workshop is also planned for August 2015 to share developed course materials and delivery mechanisms.