Experience with a process for software engineering Web-course development

In 1999 The Software Engineering Program at University of Houston-Clear Lake elected to be one to participate in the development and delivery of official Web-based course offerings. The software engineering program had operated as a distance education program for the past six years via two-way live interactive video broadcast into multiple receiving sites. The new venture into Web-based delivery would prove to be quite different from the live broadcast distance courses since the lecture components and live classroom interactions were not provided. With the live broadcast method heavy use was made of the Web to provide easy access to all assignments, supplementary material, lecture notes, class messages, bulletin boards and an ftp site for assignment submission. This reduced phone and email time with the distance students dramatically and if certainly helped with the transition to the development of strictly Web-based courses. However, the content-related materials that had been provided to support the broadcast courses were found to be inadequate once the live lecture component was removed and the course become strictly Web-based. Fall 2000 will see the completion of the design, development and testing of three strictly Web-based software engineering courses that will form the basis for a certificate in Fundamentals of Software Engineering which will be issued by the School of Natural and Applied Science. The paper presents an overview of the activities that took place during the effort and the basic process used.