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A Course for Developing Personal Software Engineering Competencies

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Conference

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

San Antonio, Texas

Publication Date

June 10, 2012

Start Date

June 10, 2012

End Date

June 13, 2012

ISSN

2153-5965

Conference Session

Software Engineering Curricula

Tagged Division

Software Engineering Constituent Committee

Page Count

19

Page Numbers

25.33.1 - 25.33.19

DOI

10.18260/1-2--20793

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/20793

Download Count

380

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Paper Authors

biography

Tom Reichlmayr Rochester Institute of Technology

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Tom Reichlmayr is an Associate Professor in the Department of Software Engineering at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Prior to transitioning to his academic career, he worked as a software engineer in the process automation industry in a variety of roles over a span of 25 years. His teaching and research interests include the development of undergraduate software engineering curriculum, especially at the
introductory level. Of primary interest is the study of software development process and its application to course curriculum and student team projects

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biography

Michael J. Lutz Rochester Institute of Technology

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Michael Lutz is a professor of software engineering at the Rochester Institute of Technology, where he founded the first undergraduate software engineering program in the United States in 1996. His professional interests include software engineering education, formal methods, software design, and engineering concurrent software systems.

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Abstract

A Course for Developing Personal Software Engineering CompetenciesThe strength of a software development team is the sum of the capabilities of eachindividual team member. There exist at the personal level core software engineeringcompetencies that need to be cultivated to allow an individual to fulfill their potential asan effective team contributor. Students arriving to a course that introduces team basedsoftware engineering typically possess adequate introductory programming skills, but areoften lacking in those competencies required to execute a successful software project.Beyond programming there is a wide range of software construction skills includingestimation and planning, continuous integration, detailed design, debugging and unittesting that students may not have been exposed to during their introductoryprogramming sequence. Part of being a software engineer is the knowledge of multipleprogramming languages and tools; without such knowledge it is impossible to makeintelligent technology decisions. What is more, the technology landscape evolves rapidlyover time, so the ability to learn and apply new languages and tools is an essential skill.Students come to realize that much like in the workplace of a professional softwareengineer these skills are not so much taught as they are learned. They must take theinitiative to be responsible for their own learning. This paper captures our experienceswith a second year software engineering course designed to address these challenges. Inaddition to discussing the topics covered in the course we also present active andcooperative learning practices utilized in class activities.

Reichlmayr, T., & Lutz, M. J. (2012, June), A Course for Developing Personal Software Engineering Competencies Paper presented at 2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, San Antonio, Texas. 10.18260/1-2--20793

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