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COMMON SOFTWARE ENGINEERING COURSE Experiences from Different Countries

Zoran Budimac, Zoran Putnik Department of Mathematics and Informatics, Faculty of Science, University of ,

Mirjana Ivanović Department of Mathematics and Informatics, Faculty of Science, University of Novi Sad, Serbia

Klaus Bothe Institute of Informatics, Humboldt University ,

Keywords: Joint Course, Software Engineering, Team assignments.

Abstract: A joint common course has been created as a result of a project of the “Stability Pact of South-Eastern ” and DAAD. It has been conducted in Novi Sad, Serbia, with graduate students, and in , Al- bania, with master students by teachers from Berlin and Novi Sad. In this paper, similar methods used in each of these courses, and outcomes reached by students are presented and compared with the achievements within the “original” course, conducted at the Humboldt University in Berlin.

1 PRELIMINARIES at the Humboldt University in Berlin. It covers more than 85% of the elementary lessons suggested in With support of DAAD and the “Stability Pact of “Curricular guidelines for undergraduate programs South-”, a joint project was estab- in computing” (ACM 2001, SWEBOK 2001). lished in 1999. Idea was to build and evolve com- mon courses in several fields of computer science, starting with “Software Engineering”. 2 STRUCTURE OF THE COURSE The project consists of participants from 15 uni- versities, from 9 countries: Germany, Serbia, FYR The course is conducted at several participating uni- Macedonia, , as core members, and , versities as a whole, or in part: , , Albania, and Montenegro as associate members (Bothe, 2003; – At Humboldt University in Berlin, it’s been con- ducted for a decade, for undergraduate students; Bothe, 2005; Budimac, 2008; Zdravkova, 2003). – At the University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Sci- The main goals of the project were: ence, course has been conducted: – “Software Engineering” is included into univer- – for postgraduate CS students, for 2 years, sities’ curricula of all participating countries; – for undergraduate CS students, for 4 years. – Agreement on a joint course was performed, – At the University of Beograd, Serbia, Timisoara, with creation of teaching, examination, and as- Romania, , Bulgaria, and , FYR sessment material; Macedonia, course has been conducted in differ- – Founding of e-Learning facilities was completed; ent ways and durations in the last several years; – At the Polytechnics University of Tirana, a 7-day Goals are performed through cooperation in de- crash-course has been conducted for 2 years. velopment of teaching materials, and production of a distributed, Internet-based, multilingual university The course consists of 28 topics covering intro- course. Joint course originated from one conducted ductory notions of software engineering. Budimac Z., Putnik Z., Ivanovic´ M. and Bothe K. (2009). COMMON SOFTWARE ENGINEERING COURSE - Experiences from Different Countries. In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Computer Supported Education, pages 375-378 Copyright c SciTePress 375

The second essential component of the course is produce results in a given time. Later, one exercise usage two of complex case-studies. class is organized where the most provoking solution The third component of the course is team as- is presented by the members of the team submitting signments. An assignment pool was created, and it. lecturers are free to choose from it. From 5 to 20 For solving of the assignments, students are di- teams was created per year, sizing from 3 to 5 stu- vided into teams, according to their own choice. dents. During the school year, assignments are given This approach has several advantages (Bielikova to teams, with a deadline of 2-3 weeks to solve it. A 2004). The first is simplicity from the managerial minimum number of points required to qualify for point of view. Second is the fact that the opportunity the final exam is 50%, yet how those influence the to sign for a team of their choice creates an addi- final grade is not the same. In Germany, number of tional personal relationship within team. points does not influence the final grade. In Serbia, There are at least two disadvantages to this ap- and Albania, points gained for the assignments di- proach. First, the team quality can (and usually does) rectly influence the final grade. vary significantly. The second drawback is that oc- casionally, members of the groups have complaints on the other members. While students are informed 3 ASSIGNMENTS AND that they are allowed to “fire” their colleague from ACHIEVEMENTS the team, this is much more difficult when team members are mutual friends. For the first time during the school year 2004/05 an Not all of the assignments are performed each identical complete course, with the same case stud- year. Especially, the length of the course influences ies, and the same assignments for students was held the choice of assignments for the course in Tirana. in Berlin and in Novi Sad. Later on, the same course Another important point is the fact that the “correct was conducted in a different style in Tirana, but with solution” which is presented to students is created in the same general structure. cooperation, based on the combined experience of A pool of nine assignments has been created. lecturers from Berlin and Novi Sad. – Assignment 1: Review of “(preliminary) re- quirements specification”. 4 RESULTS FOR ASSIGNMENTS – Assignment 2: Application of a function-point method on a given requirements specification. – Assignment 3: Review of a product model re- Results gained at different universities, for the as- sulted after structured analysis. signments are presented here. Number of students – Assignment 4: Development of a use-case dia- grows every year, yet percentage of gained points gram and class diagram for a given problem. for assignments shows regular behaviour. For stu- – Assignment 5: Definition of a formal specifica- dents from Novi Sad results are given in Table 1. tion for several given operations. – Percentage of gained points for the first year is – Assignment 6: Review of a solution of the fourth significantly different than during the following assignment of a different team. years. Reason for this probably is connected to – Assignment 7: Measuring a quality of software. the non-experience of lecturers. – Assignment 8: Specification of a regression test. – The worst results are usually gained for the as- – Assignment 9: Creation of a classification tree. signment number 2 (the function-point method). The following procedure for assignments is ap- The assignment is quite straightforward, yet it plied: Teams are given specific tasks and have to seems that it has some hidden difficulties.

Table 1: Assignment points for Novi Sad students of Computer Science.

Average Average Average Average Average Average Average Total Nr of Points Points Points Points Points Points Points Points Novi Sad Students Assgn 1 Assgn 2 Assgn 3 Assgn 4 Assgn 5 Assgn 6 Assgn 7 Assgn 2004 45 81,11% 66,67% 63,78% 73,11% 75,78% 88,61% 68,52% 74,05% 2005 54 73,89% 74,53% 80,38% 79,90% 80,68% 94,32% 95,45% 81,75% 2006 60 81,67% 75,42% 88,00% 75,56% 80,67% 95,00% 81,85% 2007 66 77,73% 75,99% 85,76% 77,42% 78,30% 94,38% 91,67% 82,18% Average 78,60% 73,15% 79,48% 76,50% 78,86% 92,43% 87,66% 79,96%

Table 4: Test points for Novi Sad students of Computer Science.

Average Average Average Average Total Points Points Points Points Points Novi Sad Test 1 Test 2 Test 3 Test 4 Tests 2005 68,07% 66,09% 66,92% 63,95% 66,25% 2006 70,41% 71,35% 67,54% 70,89% 70,05% 2007 68,63% 70,00% 54,01% 53,33% 61,49% Average 69,03% 69,14% 62,82% 62,72% 65,93%

Table 5: Test points for Tirana master students. Average Average Nr of Points Points Total Points Students Test 1 Test 2 Tests Tirana 2007 17 58,33% 50,33% 54,33% Tirana 2008 15 64,23% 56,43% 60,33% Tirana 2008 II 15 67,33% 52,00% 59,67% Average 63,30% 52,92% 58,11%

6 CONCLUSIONS REFERENCES

Results of the project were very successful, first of Bielikova, M., Navrat, P., 2004. Experiences with Design- all for students: ing a Team Project Module for Teaching Teamwork to Students, Journal of Computing and Information – Students are enabled to learn according to con- Technology, Vol 13, Nr 1, (pp.1 – 10). temporary contents, principles and standards; Bothe, K., Schuetzler, K., Budimac, Z., Zdravkova, K., – Course compatibility, both general and particu- Bojic, D., Stoyanov, S., 2003. Technical and Manage- lar, is achieved; rial Principles of a Distributed Cooperative Develop- – Experiences, methods, and learning activities ment of a Multi-Lingual Educational Course, 1st Bal- and styles of lecturers from several different kan Conference in Informatics, , , countries are adopted; (pp.112-120). Bothe, K., Schützler, K., Budimac, Z., Zdravkova, K., There are a lot of similarities with the results 2005. Collaborative Development of a Multi-Lingual gained for the assignments. The final grade for each Software Engineering Course across Countries, 35th of conducted courses is on the average between 8,20 ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, Indi- and 8,29 for all countries. anapolis, USA, (pp. T1A-1 – T1A-5.Z.). Considering the method of passing the exam and Budimac, Z., Putnik, Z., Ivanović, M., Bothe, K., Schu- results for assignments and tests general conclusions etzler, K., 2008 Conducting a Joint Course on Soft- ware Engineering Based on Teamwork of Students, In- are drawn out: formatics in Education, An International Journal, In- – Students belonging to higher years are: (slightly) stitute of Mathematics and Informatics, Lithuanian more serious; get (slightly) higher number of Academy of Sciences, Vol 7., Issue 1., (pp. 17-30). points for the assignments and for tests; pass the ACM, 2001. Computing Curricula 2001, ACM and the exam in (slightly) larger percentage. Computer Society of the IEEE, http://www.acm.org – Comparable groups of students from different SWEBOK, 2001. Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge SWEBOK, Bourque, P. and Dupuis, R. countries have similar results: they use the com- (Ed.), IEEE Computer Science Press. mon material; are confronted with the same SE course homepage, http://www2.informatik.hu- methodology and didactics; meet the similar berlin.de/swt/intkoop/daad/ style, techniques of presentation and exam Zdravkova, K., Bothe, K., Budimac, Z., 2003. SETT-Net: – Good results with the application of common A Network for Software Engineering Training and course material and techniques are a conse- Teaching, ITI- Interfaces, quence of exchange of experiences and opinions Cavtat, Croatia, (pp.281-286). of Project participants.