Software engineering beginning in the first computer science course

Abstract

The demand for computing and computing power is increasing at a rapid pace. With this demand, the ability to develop, enhance and maintain software is a top priority. Educating students to do competent work in software development, enhancement and maintenance has become a complex problem. Software engineering concepts are typically not introduced in beginning computer science courses. Students do not see software engineering until the third or fourth year of the curriculum. We do not believe students can acquire an adequate software engineering foundation with the present approach. We believe an emphasis on software engineering should begin in the very first course and continue throughout the curriculum. We are redesigning our curriculum to reflect this. The first course of the new curriculum is complete. This article focuses on two of the laboratory activities we have developed which deal with specific software engineering concepts.

The work detailed in this paper was supported in part by NSF grant CS-NSF-5239-92.