Experiences from the first delivery of a new immersive software engineering course: mathematical foundations and data analytics

According to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of job postings for software engineers has steadily increased over the past few years and is expected to grow by 22% from 2019 to 2029. This paper presents the pedagogical experience within the new Immersive Software Engineering (ISE) program concerning mathematical foundations and data analytics topics. These topics were designed to cover essential mathematical concepts such as calculus, linear algebra, probability, and statistics and their integration within data analytic tools and techniques such as time-series forecasting, data cleaning, data visualization, and introduction to pattern recognition. In addition, hands-on projects and real-world applications were incorporated throughout the course to provide students with practical experience in these areas. We reflect on the first delivery of the ISE course, which provided students with a new innovative blended learning environment, and how it will be further developed towards Open Educational Resources (OER) components and refined to respond to the rapidly evolving needs of the software engineering industry.