Abstract
Over the past decade, it has been established that a good education in software engineering requires a specialized program of study different from traditional computer science programs. What should constitute such a specialized program of study, however, is still a matter of debate. Here we bring to this debate a new perspective that describes how we believe software engineering education should be framed, namely through the context in which software eventually is placed. That is, we must study software and information, development and design, technical and social issues, synthesis and analysis. At UC Irvine, we have designed and now offer a program of study that provides this focus – a four-year B.S. degree in Informatics. In this paper, we present our view of software engineering education, the principles underlying our Informatics curriculum, an overview of the curriculum itself and its pedagogy, some reflections on our experiences to date, and a concluding list of challenges that our approach addresses and that are critical for any approach to software engineering education.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
ACM, AIS, and IEEE-CS Joint Task Force for Computing Curricula 2005, Computing Curricula (2005), http://www.acm.org/education/curricula.html
McMaster University, Department of Computing and Software, http://www.cas.mcmaster.ca/cas/
IEEE-CS and ACM Joint Task Force on Computing Curricula, Software Engineering 2004: Curriculum Guidelines for Undergraduate Degree Programs in Software Engineering (A Volume of the Computing Curricula Series) 2004, http://sites.computer.org/ccse/
University of California, Irvine, Department of Informatics, http://www.ics.uci.edu/informatics/ugrad/
Smith: Teamwork and Project Management. McGraw-Hill, New York (2004)
Oh Navarro, van der Hoek: Design and Evaluation of an Educational Software Process Simulation Environment and Associated Model. In: Eighteenth Conference on Software Engineering Education & Training, pp. 25–32 (February 2005)
Schank, Cleary (eds.): Engines for Education. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Hillsdale (1995)
Brown, Collins, Duguid: Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning. Educational Researcher 18(1), 32–42
Schank: Virtual Learning. McGraw-Hill, New York (1997)
Keller, Suzuki: Use of the ARCS Motivation Model in Courseware Design. In: Jonassen, D.H. (ed.) Instructional Designs for Microcomputer Courseware, Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillsdale (1988)
Margolis, Fischer: Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing. MIT Press, Cambridge (2001)
Indiana University, School of Informatics, http://www.informatics.indiana.edu
Guzdial: Introduction to computing and programming with Python: A Multimedia Approach. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs (2004)
Gehrke, et al.: Reporting about Industrial Strength Software Engineering Courses for Undergraduates. In: Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Software Engineering, pp. 395–405 (2002)
Sebern: The Software Development Laboratory: Incorporating Industrial Practice in an Academic Environment. In: Proceedings of the 15th Conference on Software Engineering and Training, pp. 118–127 (2002)
Daniels, Faulkner, Newman: Open Ended Group Projects, Motivating Students and Preparing them for the ’Real World’. In: Proceedings of the Fifteenth Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training, pp. 115–126 (2002)
Jazayeri: Education of a Software Engineer. In: Keynote at the Automated Software Engineering Conference (2004)
University of Washington, Information School, http://www.ischool.washington.edu
York College of Pennsylvania, http://www.ycp.edu/academics
Montclair State University, Department of Computer Science, http://cs.montclair.edu/undergraduate.html
Rochester Institute for Technology, Department of Software Engineering, http://www.se.rit.edu/degrees.html
Milwaukee School of Engineering, B.S. in Software Engineering, http://www.msoe.edu/eecs/se/
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
van der Hoek, A., Kay, D.G., Richardson, D.J. (2006). Informatics: A Novel, Contextualized Approach to Software Engineering Education. In: Inverardi, P., Jazayeri, M. (eds) Software Engineering Education in the Modern Age. ICSE 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4309. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11949374_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11949374_10
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-68203-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-68204-2
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)