Teaching Undergraduate Software Engineering Using Open Source Development Tools

Software engineering is a key topic in computing education. Many schools offer a project-oriented course, or multi-course sequence, to teach students both the theoretical concepts of soft-ware development as well as the practical aspects of developing software systems in a team envi-ronment. Typically, in these courses, students practice the principles of requirements analysis, project management, a development methodology, and effective teamwork through a small-to-medium software project. For such a course to maintain its currency and relevancy, it is impor-tant for students to be exposed to current tools and techniques for software development. Capa-bilities, such as project management, requirements tracking, configuration management, collabo-ration tools, and team communication are ideally experienced in a hands-on manner as part of the project. Commercial tools can be cost-prohibitive and difficult to learn to use effectively in a one or two semester course. At our institution, we investigated the use of open source software de-velopment tools that were easy to learn, transferable to other classes to enhance their perceived value to the student, and could be easily integrated into the existing project-oriented two-course sequence in software engineering. This paper describes the tools and their integration in the course, our experience, student’s reactions, and compares the results to previous course offerings