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Most computer science (CS) programs require one or more courses in software development. They may be called software engineering, senior design project, senior practicum or some other variation on these titles. Often considered a capstone, projectoriented requirement, these courses are taught using a wide range of instructional approaches. Many projects are based on the traditional waterfall model or some variant thereof. This paper presents a comprehensive, two-course approach to teaching a software development sequence in a CS program using a disciplined, heavyweight development process namely the Rational Unified Process (RUP) ® . Using a use-case driven, architecture-centric, iterative development approach, the paper presents a detailed description of eleven project deliverables.

The Texas Christian University (TCU) Computer Science Department was established in 1981. From the outset, the Department's CS1 course has presented significant teaching challenges due to the wide diversity of student's taking the class. Traditionally, only 25-35°/. of the students enrolled in the course are computing science majors, the remaining being students from a wide diversity of disciplines, many of which are non-science based. Despite the diversity, it has been necessary for the course, and its content, to be structured to satisfy essential core requirements for students majonng in computer science and computer information science as well as to meet program requirements for the many non-computer science majors taking the course. This paper discusses some of the unique issues associated with teaching a Java-based CS 1 course to a very diverse group of students, the majority of which have very unsophisticated problem solving skills, and little or no programming expertise. A representative set of experiments and programming assignments are included.