Software Design Studio: A Practical Example

We have been generally successful for transferring software engineering knowledge to industry through various forms of education. However, many challenges in software engineering training remain. A key amongst these is how best to energise software engineering education with real-world software engineering practices. This paper describes our experience of delivering a radically different approach based on the notion of a Software Design Studio. The Software Design Studio is both a lab for students engaged in conceiving, designing and developing software products as well as an approach for teaching software engineering in the lab which emphasizes practical hands-on work and experimentation. The feedback on the Software Design Studio -- from both staff and students -- has been outstanding. Although the programme is designed as a small, elite programme there is interest to see if the teaching methods can be transferred across to the much larger undergraduate programme in Computer Science. In this paper, we provide a detailed description of how our studio works in practice so that others, thinking of tak-ing a studio or studio-inspired approach, can use in designing their own courses.

I. Introduction

Software engineering has evolved greatly from its humble beginnings in the late 1950s when it was largely defined by coding. Today software engineering is concerned with how best to create software in ways that promote sustainable development and maximize quality. This evolution has been influenced by 40 years of advances in software engineering including; abstraction, modularity, generality, anticipation of changes, separation of concerns and several software development paradigms. There is general consensus amongst researchers and practitioners alike that these advances have greatly improved the quality and delivery of the software produced today [1]. This means that we have been generally successful for transferring software engineering knowledge to industry through various forms of education [2] [3]. However, many challenges in software engineering training remain. A key amongst these is how best to energise software engineering education with realworld software engineering practices.