Enriching software engineering courses with service-learning projects and the open-source approach

  • Authors:

  • Chang Liu

  • Affiliations:

  • Ohio University

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 27th international conference on Software engineering
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

Real-world software engineers deal with complex problem. Yet many software engineering courses do not involve projects of enough complexity to give students such experience. We sense that service-learning projects, while difficult to manage and sustain, can serve a crucial role in this regard. Through trials in a senior-level software engineering course, we discovered that the open-source approach works well to enable students to work on large, multiple-term service-learning projects. We developed GROw, a cross-term, cross-team educational software process to meet the challenges of adopting complex, real-world projects in one-term courses, and to sustain service learning.