The Best Time to Teach Software Engineering Courses in Information Technology Programs

Abstract

The best time for teaching software engineering courses has been an

issue of debate for a long time, in addition to the issue of how to teach

software engineering courses. Some researchers are arguing that teaching in

large groups is better than small groups. Others are advocating a projectbased

approach. Recently, we have noticed that there is an evident weakness

among our students in applying and using software engineering principles in

advanced courses that require major software projects. We have also noticed

that many software graduation projects lack the concrete and correct usage

of sound software engineering principles. In an attempt to determine the

main reasons behind that, we reviewed the study plans of many IT- related

departments, which generally distribute courses over years and semesters,

and found that software engineering courses are taught early in the plans.

However, we argue that such courses should be taught as late as possible to

emphasize the engineering principles rather than focusing on the details that

are covered in other courses. We conducted a survey regarding that and the

results were in favour of our argument.