A Global and Competition-Based Model for Fostering Technical and Soft Skills in Software Engineering Education

The project experience described in this paper builds upon three years of running global software development projects in an educational setting. It explicitly addresses some of the difficulties we have experienced in the past in getting students to deliver a quality software product at the end of a typical semester-long course in which Software Engineering is taught for the first time while a capstone project is concurrently undertaken. The initiative is unique in that it brings undergraduate, graduate and industry students together in a synergistic manner to capitalize upon individual learning needs and prior skill sets. To focus upon quality, coaches and auditors support traditional student teams with critical technical tasks. Working from identical requirements, a five-way competition affords multiple perspectives, improving the requirements, encouraging design diversity and so increasing the likelihood of the client receiving a deployable product. The fact that the development te...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: CSEE
• Authors: Olly Gotel, Vidya Kulkarni, Moniphal Say, Christelle Scharff, Thanwadee Sunetnanta
• Keywords: CSEE 2009, Global Software Development, Quality Software Product, Software Engineering, Typical Semester-long Course