Student Developed Computer Science Educational Tools as Software Engineering Course Projects

In a one semester course on software engineering for upper level computer science students, students typically learn the fundamental software processes spanning the software development lifecycle – from requirements specification through architectural design, implementation, testing, and evolution, along with the software tools that support the development activities. Courses in software engineering often incorporate semester long team projects, where students collaborate on a software development project. Thus, in addition to developing the technical skills associated with software development, the software engineering course is a common place where computer science students develop their skills in teamwork and collaboration, as well as in communications. The nature and type of projects in such courses varies. Some integrate projects where students develop software for “real clients” such as on campus departments, or local non-profits, while others have been increasing exposure to open source development with students contributing to existing open source projects. In our software engineering course, we have recently introduced course projects where teams of students specify, design, and implement software that assists computer science students in learning fundamental computer science topics. In this paper, we present our experience with such CS learning tool projects, including a discussion of the impact on student outcomes in a senior-level course on software engineering. We ___________________________________________ * Copyright © 2016 by the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges. Permission to copy without fee all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for direct commercial advantage, the CCSC copyright notice and the title of the publication and its date appear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges. To copy otherwise, or to republish, requires a fee and/or specific permission.