The role of Procedural Guidance in Software Engineering Education

Designing and programming require several types of knowledge. Beside conceptual knowledge, procedural knowledge is of importance. Procedural knowledge, however, is often missed in courses about software design and implementation. As a consequence, students can easily be stuck and do not know how to proceed.Considering software engineering as a complex task, the didactic approach 4C/ID is applicable. This approach prescribes that besides mental models, cognitive strategies should be learned, consisting of overall steps and rules and procedures per step. As an example, a procedure for designing and programming a concurrent program is briefly described. This procedure will scaffffold studentfis learning of concurrency concepts and their application