Eliminating aversion to software process in computer science students and measuring the results

If the level of adoption of software engineering best practice is to be increased in industry, then an appreciation of its importance must be conveyed to computer science students. Accomplishment of this goal is often severely hampered by the fact that many computer science faculty view the software process as intellectually shallow and that many computer science students come to the field with an aversion to the oppressive discipline which they perceive to be required to follow it. We have devised a method of forcing students to recognize the necessity of software engineering best practice by bringing them to the realization that without it they will fail, not in their course work, but in real-world software development projects. The method has been tested twice at Stevens Institute and is about to be used at a number of other universities. Evaluation of results is being done through the use of two standard instruments, the Felder Learning Styles Inventory and the Academic Locus of Control Scale and of a novel Attitude Toward Software Engineering (ATSE) instrument designed by the authors.