Adapting Teaching of a Software Engineering Service Course Due to COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted almost every sphere of life. Higher education in Australia was similarly majorly impacted, and due to the sudden necessity of ensuring physical distancing, on campus teaching became impossible. Most of the higher educational institutes in Australia moved to using a distance education mode to continue delivery of teaching with barely a few weeks warning. This article presents experiences moving a data structures and networking course taught to Software Engineering students at an Australian university during COVID-19 pandemic to online delivery. Due to the nature of the course and student cohort, a number of challenges were faced teaching the course in online mode compared to that for which it was designed. We summarize key lessons learned and propose some guidelines for future course design to take advantage of online learning while maintaining learning outcomes.