MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD


DATE:		January 12, 2016

Prepared by:	Dr. David A. Gaitros
		Chair, Undergraduate Curriculum Committee 
		Department of Computer Science

RE:		ABET Course Reports for CEN4020		

Course number: CEN4020	
Course name:    Software Engineering I 
Course review committee members: Chris Lacher, David Gaitros, Sonia Haduic
Report submitted date: 12/11/2015 

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1. Are there any problems with course last year? If Yes, describe the problems.
- CEN4020 now has three ABET reporting requirements now since CEN4021 wil no longer be a required course: 
o Teamwork, participation in a group
o Software requirements anaylsis
o Software design
- The large numbers of students in the class of changed the methods that I need to use to evaluate students. I can no longer give a significant amount of time providing feedback to individual students on the design of their project.  
- I have, in the past, started the organization of the groups for the project within the first few weeks of the class but virtually all of the students postponed working on the project until the last half of the class.  
- As I had suspected industry is not using UML as prolifically as the text books would lead us to believe.  In speaking with former students who have worked in the industry there is more emphasis in Agile software development, code walkthroughs, testing and automated testing platforms, and configuration management.  
- The use of patterns and code re-use has more emphasis than UML. 
- Working in groups and communication ( written and oral ) are still very important. 

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2. Course committee recommendations to the current/future instructors.

1. Reduce the amount of UML instruction(but still offer it)  in favor of more lectures and perhaps homework on AGILE methods 
2. Offer the instruction on Agile methods early in the course so they can be employed during the group project. 
3. Compress the timeline of the group project near the end of the class after.
4. Introduce a homework assignment on solving a common pattern problem using C++ ( such as Model View Controller).
5. The group project is used to assess the individuals participation in a team through peer evaluations and the successful production of a small prototype. 
6. The other ABET assessments come from homework assignments where students are individually assessed.  

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3. Course committee recommendations to department/UCC regarding this course.

NA.