Enriching software engineering courses with service-learning projects and the open-source approach

Abstract

Real-world software engineers deal with complex problem. Yet many software engineering courses do not involve projects of enough complexity to give students such experience. We sense that service-learning projects, while difficult to manage and sustain, can serve a crucial role in this regard. Through trials in a senior-level software engineering course, we discovered that the open-source approach works well to enable students to work on large, multiple-term service-learning projects. We developed GROw, a cross-term, cross-team educational software process to meet the challenges of adopting complex, real-world projects in one-term courses, and to sustain service learning.