Chapter 18: Remarks about Software Engineering Education

Introduction

In the past couple of years , terms such as chasm and crossroads have been heard in discussions about computer science and software engineering in general and their education in particular. Here are several examples: Glass s paper Revisiting the Industry/Academe Communication Chasm [Glass97]; El-Kadi s paper Stop That Divorce! [El-Kadi99], which urges us to stop the divorce between computing and software engineering since there is too much at stake (p. 28); and Gudivada s paper [Gudivada03] The Computing Profession at the Crossroads, which calls industry and academia to work together to chart the best course for the profession s future (pp. 90 “92).

In parallel (and perhaps as a result of these voices), educators suggest exploring new directions for the education of future software engineers . Among others, Denning in his Educating a New Engineer article [Denning92] suggests that if a curriculum wants to prepare students for a changing world, it must incorporate new elements, such as effective interaction with others and a greater sensitivity to the historical and cultural spaces in which we live and work. [Yeh02] says that in addition to the traditional core study of computer science and engineering education, we must also integrate into the software engineering curriculum the basic knowledge of business performance and measurements, fundamental skills of communication, and human problem solving in team environments.

Each of the aforementioned articles emphasizes a different gap or elements to be added to the software-engineering curriculum. Some refer to the lack of human skills in the training of new software engineers and others suggest strengthening the mutual responsibility of industry and academia when a new curriculum for software engineering is constructed . One common idea stands behind all these calls for action, however: all suggest broadening the education of software engineers beyond the scientific theoretical courses. This book about human aspects of software engineering is written in that spirit. We hope that it will be useful in computer science and software engineering programs.