Volume 7
Volume 7, Number 40 |
May 21, 2009 |
|
Richard M. Stillman
Alan R. Peslak
|
Abstract: Software engineering is Money Magazine’s top rated profession. The development of novel information systems has created new industries and catapulted developers to wealth and stardom. Yet, for many students of computer and information systems, software engineering is just another hurdle they must jump to satisfy degree requirements. How best to teach software engineering so that students appreciate its unique and vital lessons remains an unanswered question. Our software engineering course exploits students’ experience in specific domains as a foundation for learning the skills of software development. The course syllabus provides a vehicle for honing one’s development skills, practicing abstraction, and finally experiencing the “aha” phenomenon when the student has successfully integrated two different fields of knowledge into a new discipline. We report the results of this approach.
Keywords: Higher education, software engineering, information systems, active learning environment, domain knowledge
Download this issue: ISEDJ.7(40).Stillman.pdf (Adobe PDF, 12 pages, 719 K bytes)
Preview the contents: Stillman.j.txt (ASCII txt, 17 K bytes)
Recommended Citation: Stillman and Peslak (2009). Teaching Software Engineering Including Integration with Other Disciplines. Information Systems Education Journal, 7 (40). http://isedj.org/7/40/. ISSN: 1545-679X. (A preliminary version appears in The Proceedings of ISECON 2007: §2744. ISSN: 1542-7382.)