The Best Time to Teach Software Engineering Courses in Information Technology Programs

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.