A student-enacted simulation approach to software engineering education

In some cases, real-world application of software engineering concepts does not effectively map with current undergraduate curriculums. Typically, a student's first "hands-on" experience working on large-scale software development projects is via an intern position or his/her first full-time position. However, prior exposure to the corporate project environment would greatly improve a student's performance in industry. In order to develop students for successful careers in software engineering, specifically for software development, they must be immersed not only in the software development lifecycle and paradigms, but also in the workings of large project teams. Currently, most undergraduate software engineering courses are taught by presenting the concepts and methodologies and assigning fragmented three-to-four person group projects. In the Department of Computer Science, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, a two-course approach to undergraduate software engineering education has been developed that incorporates the practical application of coursework in a large team setting. The first course presents a firm software design basis, while the second course demonstrates corporate-level software engineering concepts with a semester-long software development simulation where the entire class is the development team. This paper presents the experiences from offering this software engineering simulation approach.     

Software modeling techniques for a first course in software engineering: a workshop-based approach

Computer science studies in Spain are organized in such a way that software engineering courses normally appear in the last years. This situation establishes a programming-first approach in the overall curricular structure, and the resulting situation produces several unwanted side effects. One of the main problems is that students lack the abstraction capability they need in order to model software. For this reason, the practical classes of the first software engineering course have been organized in workshop sessions, where each session is devoted to a concrete modeling technique. A workshop session is built around a problem published on the teacher's website. The session is divided into two parts. In the first part, the students are organized into work groups, and they give an initial solution to the proposed modeling problem. In the second part of the session, one volunteer group presents its solution, and afterwards, in a moderated debate, the rest of the students discuss the proposed solution. Finally, the volunteer group writes a workshop session report that contains the final agreed-on solution. This approach has been successfully applied to the software modeling practical classes of a first software engineering course during the last five years, achieving important improvements in the students' abstraction capabilities, which is much needed in software modeling.     

Teaching the nonscience major: EE101-The digital information age

EE 10l-The Digital Information Age, a course taught for the past six years to nonscience majors and freshmen considering electrical engineering as a major, is one the largest courses at Yale with a cumulative enrollment of approximately 2700 students. The goal is to describe how common-place digital information systems work and why they work that way by illustrating clever engineering solutions to technological problems. The course considers the following topics: information sources; logic gates; computer hardware; and software, measuring information using entropy, error detection and correction coding, compression, encryption, data transmission and data manipulation by computer. Earlier versions of EE101 included both hardware and software projects. The hardware project was to implement a bean counter using digital logic modules. The software project involved writing a personal World Wide Web page and developing a Web page for a Yale-affiliated organization. Recent versions replated the hardware project with additional Internet projects that receive data from a Web page viewer and that measure transmission times and the number of nodes between a source and destination. Having completed the course, students feel that they have an appreciation for the digital information systems they encounter on a daily basis     

A knowledge based tutoring system for teaching fault analysis

A knowledge based tutoring system is used to support the education of power engineering students. The aim of this project is to make teaching and learning more productive and efficient by employing modern technologies. It seeks to find new methods to teach large numbers of students with no increase in staff. The tutoring system is based on an expert system shell. It provides a functionally interacting set of theory and problems, and supports student progress through monitoring and assessment. This paper describes the development of the tutoring system for teaching electrical engineering subjects, and in particular, fault analysis in power systems. The expert system based software has been successfully used by power engineering students. They found this software easy to use and understand, and it has become an extra teaching tool     

Development of a 16-bit microprogrammable computer as a seniorcourse project: a teamwork approach to engineering education

The authors describe an educational experiment in computer engineering at the University of Washington. Eight senior students work together to design and fabricate a 16-bit general-purpose microprogrammable computer system and support software. The project was developed in a capstone hardware design course in electrical engineering. In parallel with other demands of the course, students collaborated on such tasks as architectural specification and research, design and wirewrapping, and testing of the system     

Experience Management Wikis for Reflective Practice in Software Capstone Projects

Software engineering curriculum guidelines state that students should practice methods, techniques, and tools. A capstone project is one possibility to address this aim. A capstone project helps the students to increase their problem solving competencies, improve their social skills (e.g., communication skills), and gather practical experience. A crux of such projects is that students perform ldquoreflectiverdquo practice in order to learn from their experiences. The authors believe that experience gathering and reuse are effective techniques to stimulate reflective activities. An adapted free- and open-source Wiki-based system called software organization platform (SOP) is used to support students in managing their observations and experiences. The system can be used for experience exchange within the team and for experience reuse in forthcoming projects. The results of a case study show that standard Wiki functions improve communication and information sharing by means of explicit observation and experience documentation. A total of 183 documented observations and experiences at the end of the project provide a measure for the amount of reflection students have had during the capstone project. Still, the advantages of using Wikis will decrease when no technical adaptations of the Wiki to the learning objectives and to the software engineering tasks are made. Limitations of the case study, future evaluation steps, and planned developments of SOP will be provided in this paper.     

Project-Based Lab Teaching for Power Electronics and Drives

Project-based learning motivates students to learn actively, so it has been widely applied to many engineering subjects. However, the applications of this approach are limited in electric power courses because of the hazards associated with high voltage or mains voltage (240 V in Australia). This paper presents a project designed for a power electronics and drives course. In this project, students use a programmable intelligent computer (PIC) microcontroller and an H-bridge to design a control system for a real practical application, such as a washing machine, tram, or electric lift. Students gain hands-on experience, and also improve their skill in product development, self-directed learning, teamwork, and project management. Practical projects increase the challenge for students and, hence, their interest level. The project includes both hardware and software. Each part of the project and the student assessment are described here.     

Experiences with a software maintenance project course

A report is made on an experience of teaching a senior-year course on software maintenance, centered around a maintenance project. For the course, students organized themselves into groups and worked on adaptive and perfective maintenance of selected real-world software products. The projects involved such issues as code understanding, requirements engineering and maintenance design, and dealt with both open-source and proprietary software. The main triumphs and pitfalls of the course are recounted, and recommendations are made on project selection and general course conduct.     

PeopleMover: an example of interdisciplinary project-based education in electrical engineering

In this paper, the authors present an interdisciplinary design project that was introduced into the electrical engineering curriculum as an example of project-based education. Within the project, students design and implement an autonomous rail system intended for people transportation from system specifications down to a fully working system including hardware and software. The educational assets and drawbacks are discussed as well as the practical issues of setting up a large educational project. The current state of the project and an overview of future improvements based on student feedback are highlighted as well.     

The multidisciplinary international virtual design studio (MIVDS)

The International Virtual Design Studio (MIVDS) that was originated between the Departments of Mechanical Engineering of Union College (UC) and the Middle East Technical University (METU) is now extended to include the Mechanical Engineering Department at Queen's University in Canada, the Computer Systems Engineering/Electrical Engineering Department at UC, and the Electrical/Electronics Engineering Department of METU. The design teams that participate in this project are composed of various combinations of mechanical, electrical, and computer systems engineering students. Design project topics are selected to cover mechatronic concepts that force students toward mechatronic design solutions. After years of experience, it is now possible to draw some conclusions and report on the concept and implementation of the multidisciplinary IVDS (MIVDS) project. One important conclusion is that a strong combination of institutional support and multidisciplinary faculty commitment is required for project initiation. Success in MIVDS is highly dependent on well-defined project specifications, a single source of project information, incentives for students to participate, travel to participating countries, a balanced team structure, common design and productivity tools, 24-hour access to MIVDS facilities, and participation by all students in the manufacturing phase of the project     

Establishing a K-12 Circuit Design Program

Outreach, as defined by Wikipedia, is an effort by an organization or group to connect its ideas or practices to the efforts of other organizations, groups, specific audiences, or the general public. This paper describes a computer engineering outreach project of the Department of Computer Engineering at Ege University, Izmir, Turkey, to a local elementary school. A group of 14 K-12 students was chosen by a four-stage selection method to participate in this project. This group was then taught discrete mathematics and logic design courses from the core curriculum of the Computer Engineering program. The two 11-week courses have a total of 132 contact h. The course contents are conveyed through both theoretical lessons and laboratory sessions. All of the laboratory sessions were carried out by K-12 students. Volunteer teachers from the elementary school participated in the project. The evaluations carried out during and at the end of project indicated the degree of satisfaction on the part of students and teachers. The project is still ongoing with the same methodology in its third year.      

Efficient Fuzzy Evolutionary Algorithm-Based Approach for Solving the Student Project Allocation Problem

This paper presents a solution framework for the student project allocation (SPA) problem which is based on evolutionary algorithms (EAs), a biologically inspired stochastic, population-based search paradigm. Project-based assessment is a common component of engineering courses that are conducted in universities around the world. In their final year of study, a list of projects is made available by the academic staff and students are required to select a specific number of options from this list. The department then assigns a suitable project to each student such that preferred projects can be allocated to as many students as possible. While student interest is the primary criteria, several additional factors need to be considered such as project prerequisites, load balancing of staff commitments, and other specific university requirements. The allocation problem can therefore be seen as a complex multiobjective problem with multiple constraints. The EA-based project allocation system was recently developed and implemented in a large university department to automate this process, and to improve the matching of students to their desired projects. The solution which provides the highest level of satisfaction in meeting the varied objectives is then used to allocate projects to students. This new automated system is not only able to achieve a very high level of user satisfaction, but is also able to do so in a very short time, resulting in significant time savings.      

On Software Engineering Education: Experiences with the Software Hut Game

The Software Hut (a small software house) is a software engineering project in the form of a game, designed and used by J. J. Horning and D. B. Wortman at the University of Toronto, Toronto, Ont., Canada. This paper describes some of the problems that occurred when the present authors used projects based on the Software Hut with groups of final-year undergraduate students in two successive years at the University of Liverpool, Liverpool, England.     

A practice driven approach to software engineering education

This paper describes a two year undergraduate education program in software engineering. This program is designed around the principle of exploratory learning, whereby the students are trained to build knowledge by themselves and actively search for solutions to the problems they experience. In addition to the essential aspects of software engineering: managing complexity of large, changing systems and the ability to work in teams; the program also aims to prepare the students for working in a field of rapidly changing conditions and constraints. This paper describes how these high level goals have been implemented in an actual curriculum. At the core of the program is a set of project courses which are conducted as role playing games in order to simulate the conditions in an industrial environment. Two years worth of students have graduated from the program now, and the paper summarizes the main lessons learned as well as a follow-up survey of experiences from some of the organizations who hired the students     

P3软件在大唐信阳工程施工中的应用

P3 软件是针对项目工程管理而设计的管理软件, 是目前我国用于施工计划编制和施工进度控制最可靠和最优秀的软件。大唐信阳发电有限责任公司在大唐信阳工程项目中运用P3 软件来管理施工和控制施工进度, 并取得了较好的结果。     

A more practical approach to integrate low voltage distributionsystem into the electrical engineering curriculum

This paper describes the author's new attempt to introduce a 10-hour lecture on low voltage (LV) distribution system with a 5-hour design exercise and a 5-hour project work for all electrical engineering students. It is felt that most of the electrical engineering graduates will possibly encounter more applications in the LV system rather than the traditional power system analysis. The system earthing and the associated electrical parts for the LV network can be easily implemented in a laboratory for students to test and operate. In the design exercise, the PC-based integrated tool not only guides the students in a step-by-step approach and provides a CAD tool to automate the repetitive design process, it also evaluates the student's performance in the design exercise by using error log and a demerit point system. In the guided project work, the students are exposed to a physical LV simulator identical to an industrial installation to carry out inspection, testing, turn-on supply, fault diagnosis and restoration of supply. In a survey from 600 students, 24% strongly agreed, and 52% agreed that this 10-hour design and project works are useful and challenging. Many students expressed that they are interested in their first exposure to a power engineering project     

广东电网公司应用软件生命周期管理方案探讨

国际上提出的应用软件生命周期管理理论,提出了适合广东电网公司的应用软件生命周期管理解决方案,从系统设计、项目执行、测试、发布等每一环节开展全程跟踪,实现"一站式"项目管控,以达到全面、持续提升软件质量的目标。     

Self-Paced Instruction in Engineerin: A Case Study

The objective of this project is to evaluate Keller's Personalized System of Instruction (PSI) in an appropriate course in engineering. This method is characterized by demanding unit perfection, being self-paced, using lectures only as motivational devices, and using proctors for most of the routine contact with students. In a rapidly advancing technology it is important to teach engineering students to be able to continue learning after graduation. The PSI method should be able to take advantage of the tight structure and definite course objectives of most engineering courses to develop self-learning ability in the students. This project takes the material in a senior level course in nuclear engineering and divides it into appropriate study units, develops a hierarchy between units, and creates the study questions and test material required by the PSI method. An evaluation of this technique in engineering is made using standard forms in existence in the Department of Educational Psychology and in the College of Engineering, as well as a comparison between the self-paced students and students who have taken the same course by the standard lecture method.     

A new approach to interactive tutorial software for engineeringeducation

The experimental tutorial software described in this paper is designed specifically for engineering education at the university level, and it is significantly different in purpose and structure from other educational software. Its goal is to help students understand, visualize, and connect basic concepts. It is not a design tool or a wealth of hyperlinked text or an infinite source of drill problems. It is intended to be a dynamic and flexible resource for instructors as well as students and to be used by groups as well as individuals. It takes advantage of currently available high-resolution graphics capability to go beyond what can reasonably be expected of textbooks or computer systems with small low-resolution displays. Since the software is written as an X Windows Motif application, it achieves a wide degree of platform independence for workstations and PCs. In addition, the tutorial set can be distributed without license fees or additional software acquisition costs for the user