The Relevance of Software Development Education for Students

Liebenberg, Janet; Huisman, Magda; Mentz, Elsa

doi:10.1109/te.2014.2381599

Cited by 23 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Enabling practitioners to develop successful products poses several challenges to SE education research, including fostering current practices in an ever-changing arena and having a clear focus on practical skills [37]. To this end, researchers dedicated considerable effort to mapping software processes to course sessions and deliverables, and to discuss practices, behaviors, and interactions among students [28]. The education of prospective CS/SE experts focuses mostly on fotering abstraction skills that allow students to abstract real-world problems and deliver software products.…”

Section: Background and Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Coding Camp through the Analysis of a Follow-up Project

Fronza

Corral

Pahl

et al. 2020

Proceedings of the 21st Annual Conference on Information Technology Education

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Initiatives to attract interest to software development are very popular, including coding camps for high schools. Camp's effectiveness is evaluated using different approaches: pre-and-post surveys usually analyze participant attitudes/interests in computing or self-efficacy; computing skills and learning are tested using surveys/tests, or by analyzing the final products. However, results on the camp's effectiveness are hardly generalizable due to the limited number of participants and the lack of repetition. Moreover, there is a lack of evaluation and evidence collected time after the end of the camp, to determine how participants capitalized on what they learned. To fill this gap, we organized a follow-up project to understand whether participants put in practice the foundational concepts and practices taught in one of our coding camps and recognized their impact on the characteristics of the delivered software product. Results show the camp's effectiveness in delivering technical foundations on basic aspects of Software Engineering, as well as concepts of product design and teamwork.

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Section: Background and Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Coding Camp through the Analysis of a Follow-up Project

Fronza

Corral

Pahl

et al. 2020

Proceedings of the 21st Annual Conference on Information Technology Education

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…The strongest contrast between the two groups shown in Tables IV and V was perceptions on the teaching and assessment structures; with the programming group providing feedback as to how well everything was structured, and the other containing some students claiming that the structure impacted their learning. This contrast could be interpreted to support the literature in terms of self-efficacy and mindset (Tek et al 2018) and the effect that this has on students motivation to learn material of perceived relevance (Lahtinen et al 2005;Liebenberg et al 2015;Shim et al 2017) and at the speed in which they learn (Hutchison-Green et al 2008). While motivation was not measured in the study, the feedback suggests that the flipped learning approach requires students to have academic discipline to learn passive material out of class and for students without the required motivation and interest this could have inhibited their learning.…”

Section: Negative Responsesmentioning

confidence: 55%

“…Some of the difficulties in learning to program include decomposing a problem into subtasks; reading and understanding code; coming to terms with programming principles and routines; and synthesizing this new knowledge with existing knowledge (Koulouri et al 2015). Such difficulties are even more so when the students find no relevance or interest in their learning, effecting their motivation to learn (Lahtinen et al 2005;Liebenberg et al 2015;Shim et al 2017). In part, this is because students develop domain-specific implicit theories and selfbeliefs, leading students that find value in programming to use feedback to work harder and improve, while students that see little value struggle with the novelty and difficulty impacting their mindset, lowering confidence and approach to practice and learn (Hutchison-Green et al 2008;Tek et al 2018).…”

Section: First Year Programming Coursesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching programming in common first year engineering: discipline insights applying a flipped learning problem-solving approach

Nikolic

Ros

Hastie

2018

Australasian Journal of Engineering Education

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This paper investigated at the discipline level if flipped learning and engineering focused problem solving could be used to overcome the difficulties associated with programming in a common first year engineering curriculum. Perceived relevance of course material can impact self-efficacy and mindset resulting in lower motivation to learn, effecting achievement. Literature suggests that flipped learning and engineering problem solving can be combined to improve engagement, perceived relevance and achievement. An effective implementation of flipped learning and engineering problem solving would be reflected in student interest and achievement across all disciplines. A common first year engineering course across nine engineering disciplines and a flexible cohort was implemented and analysed across two years with 793 students. Success was measured across four objectives: 1) Appeal across disciplines; 2) Achievement; 3) Future learning impact; and 4) Enrolment in computer engineering. Overall success was found across the four objectives with no major negative impact across the first-year experience, acceptable failure rates with achievement and student experience correlated with perceived discipline relevance, and enrolment success in computer engineering. Further refinement is needed targeted at improving the civil and mining student experience.This paper investigated at the discipline level if flipped learning and engineering focused problem solving could be used to overcome the difficulties associated with programming in a common first year engineering curriculum. Perceived relevance of course material can impact self-efficacy and mindset resulting in lower motivation to learn, effecting achievement. Literature suggests that flipped learning and engineering problem solving can be combined to improve engagement, perceived relevance and achievement. An effective implementation of flipped learning and engineering problem solving would be reflected in student interest and achievement across all disciplines. A common first year engineering course across nine engineering disciplines and a flexible cohort was implemented and analysed across two years with 793 students. Success was measured across four objectives: 1) Appeal across disciplines; 2) Achievement; 3) Future learning impact; and 4) Enrolment in computer engineering. Overall success was found across the four objectives with no major negative impact across the first-year experience, acceptable failure rates with achievement and student experience correlated with perceived discipline relevance, and enrolment success in computer engineering.Further refinement is needed targeted at improving the civil and mining student experience.

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“…Under goal (a), as an important side benefit, the initiative also aims at addressing the gap between the new hires' skill levels and the company's expectations of them. This gap, wellacknowledged in the industry, has been studied and highlighted by several researchers [2][3][4].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are computer science and engineering graduates ready for the software industry?

Tüzün

Erdogmus

Özbilgin

2018

Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training

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It 1 has been 50 years since the term "software engineering" was coined in 1968 at a NATO conference. The field should be relatively mature by now, with most established universities covering core software engineering topics in their Computer Science programs and others offering specialized degrees. However, still many practitioners lament a lack of skills in new software engineering hires. With the growing demand for software engineers from the industry, this apparent gap becomes more and more pronounced. One corporate strategy to address this gap is for the industry to develop supplementary training programs before the hiring process, which could also help companies screen viable candidates. In this paper, we report on our experiences and lessons learned in conducting a summer school program aimed at screening new graduates, introducing them to core skills relevant to the organization and industry, and assessing their attitudes toward mastering those skills before the hiring process begins. Our experience suggests that such initiatives can be mutually beneficial for new hires and companies alike. We support this insight with pre-and post-training data collected from the participants during the first edition of the summer school and a follow-up questionnaire conducted after a year with the participants, 50% of whom were hired by the company shortly after the summer school. CCS CONCEPTS• Social and professional topics→ Computing Education KEYWORDS Software engineering education, software engineering training, software engineering summer school, hiring practices for software professionals

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The Relevance of Software Development Education for Students

Cited by 23 publications

References 19 publications

Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Coding Camp through the Analysis of a Follow-up Project

Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Coding Camp through the Analysis of a Follow-up Project

Teaching programming in common first year engineering: discipline insights applying a flipped learning problem-solving approach

Are computer science and engineering graduates ready for the software industry?

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