Reverse Engineering a Software Engineering Curriculum

What is the best curriculum for a software engineering degree? We analyse nineteen thirdyear software engineering projects to determine the skills that students need to complete those projects. From this list we recommend compulsory and elective topics in a software engineering degree. 1 Introduction Many universities around the world have introduced [3], or are planning to introduce [1], undergraduate software engineering degrees. What is the best curriculum for a software engineering degree ? Figure 1 gives a list of possible topics to be included in a curriculum. In this paper, we explore which of these topics should be considered compulsory, and which should be considered elective. We approach this issue empirically. For the past two years, the Department of Computer Science at the University of Newcastle runs a full-year software engineering subject (COMP321) for its thirdyear students. This subject contains lectures in first semester and a large group project in second semester...