ANU Computer Science Technical Reports
TR-CS-04-04
C. W. Johnson and Ian Barnes.
Redesigning the intermediate course in software design.
November 2004.
[POSTSCRIPT (424977 bytes)] [PDF (172223 bytes)] [EPrints archive]
Abstract: Learning to design software ahead of
directly constructing it is a significant hurdle in a Software Engineering
education. Our University has run a course in software design for second-year
undergraduate students since 1994. We describe the evaluation and improvement
of the course as it evolved from 2000 to 2003, from a focus on reverse
engineering to forward design, to add design patterns and associated
programming tasks, then has redefined its objectives and re-aligned the
assessment tasks with them. We evaluated the course in four ways: by the
distribution of final grades, subjective evidence on the quality of answers
in the final examination, student satisfaction surveys, and comparison of
students' final grades with other computing courses taken at the same time.
The attempt to improve the course by introducing homework tasks on design
patterns did not improve the outcomes. But re-aligning the assessment with
the objectives, and introducing a component on requirements specification,
improved on most measures.
Technical Reports <Technical-DOT-Reports-AT-cs-DOT-anu.edu.au>
Last modified: Tue May 31 12:56:01 EST 2011