Abstract:
The best time for teaching software engineering courses has been an
issue of debate for a long time, in addition to the issue of how to teach software
engineering courses. Some researchers are arguing that teaching in large groups
is better than small groups. Others are advocating a project-based approach.
Recently, we have noticed that there is an evident weakness among our students
in applying and using software engineering principles in advanced courses that
require major software projects. We have also noticed that many software
graduation projects lack the concrete and correct usage of sound software
engineering principles. In an attempt to determine the main reasons behind that,
we reviewed the study plans of many IT-related departments, which generally
distribute courses over years and semesters, and found that software
engineering courses are taught early in the plans. However, we argue that such
courses should be taught as late as possible to emphasize the engineering
principles rather than focusing on the details that are covered in other courses.
We conducted a survey regarding that and the results were in favour of our
argument.
