Experiences and Methods from Integrating Evidence-Based Software Engineering into Education

Abstract

In today’s software development organizations, methods and tools are employed that frequently lack sufficient evidence regarding their suitability, limits, qualities, costs, and associated risks. For example, in Communications of the ACM (Communications of the ACM May 2004/Vol. 47, No. 5) Robert L. Glass, taking the standpoint of practitioners, asks for help from research: “Here’s a message from software practitioners to software researchers: We (practitioners) need your help. We need some better advice on how and when to use methodologies”. Therefore, he demands:

– a taxonomy of available methodologies, based upon their strengths and weaknesses;

– a taxonomy of the spectrum of problem domains, in terms of what practitioners need;

– a mapping of the first taxonomy to the second (or the second to the first).

The evidence-based Software Engineering Paradigm promises to solve parts of these issues by providing a framework for goal-oriented research leading to a common body of knowledge and, based on that, comprehensive problemoriented decision support regarding SE technology selection.

One issue that is becoming more and more important in the context of the evidence-based SE Paradigm is the teaching of evidence-based Software Engineering. A major discussion with regard to this issue revolves around the question of how to “grow the seeds”; that is, how can we teach evidence-based SE in a way that encourages students to practice paradigm in their professional life.

The goal of this workshop is to discuss issues related to fostering the evidence-based paradigm. The results from the workshop and especially from the working groups will be published in the “Workshop Series on Empirical Software Engineering”, Vol.3.

The workshop itself is the fourth one in the workshop series on Empirical Software Engineering. The first one was held in conjunction with PROFES 2002 in Rovaniemi, the second one was held in conjunction with the Empirical Software Engineering International Week 2003 in Rome, and the third one was held in conjunction with PROFES 2005 in Oulu.