Requirements Engineering Out of the Classroom: Anticipating Challenges Experienced in Practice

Requirements Engineering (RE) education makes use of different methods to motivate and prepare students to perform well this activity in the practical scenario. Such educational methods, however, are typically based on some simulation, be it in the scope of the scenario, the problem, or the stakeholders. A change in the traditional teaching paradigm becomes necessary, bringing the student to the center of the RE activities. This helps them realize the importance of properly identifying and organizing the demands from the target audience, so that a quality requirements specification document can be produced. This paper describes a method applied during the Requirements Engineering course using a real scenario, in which students sought to identify the diverse stakeholders' needs with respect to the university institute website. Through this work, students achieved effective engagement in practical RE activities, whose results has benefits not only to the university community, but also to the external public interested in institute information. The conduction of this work revealed — and reinforced — some relevant challenges and lessons learned.