for D3 Periods 2-4 2008/2009
Author: Karl Meinke, CSC
Up to Course home page period 2-4 2008/2009.
Below is a course analysis for the course MVK, Software Engineering. .
Course DD1363 Software Engineering. (12p)
Examination Term Paper A-F (6p)
Course period Period 2-4 2008
Lectures 40 hours
Exercises None
Labs (timetabled supervised) None
Coursebook Ian Sommerville: Software Engineering, Addison Wesley, eigth edition..
Number of Active students 131
Number of project groups 13
Finished project (end of Period 4 2009) 86%
Finished term paper (end of Period 4 2009) 83%
Completed Course (end of Period 4 2009) 71%
Course teacher Karl Meinke
Assistant project marker Inge Frick
12 students completed a course evaluation during the last lecture. (Paper
format). This represents 9% of students taking the course, so the results may
not be representative. The course evaluation form this year was designed to
test alignment between published course objectives and student learning outcomes
from a student centric perspective.
The course evaluation indicates that the course performed adequately. Particularly
the results of question 3, 9, 11 and 12 are positive.
Here are a selection of comments,
"The book seems very good but also very thick - it's a lot of pages to
read"
"The course should have been more condensed with more lectures and more
supervision from the teachers"
"All are now able to follow, not necessarily understand, the waterfall
model"
"The only thing I take with me from this course is that people are lazy,
disrespectful and stupid. And that I should never be a part of a school project
like this without closely questioning of my fellow classmates in what their
goals with the project are"
"The project were a disaster. More handledning would be good. Noone in
my group had any experience with large projects like this. We had members that
never completed anything to a deadline, dissappeared without telling anyone
... How do you handle something like that?"
"För lite tid för redovisningar, hann inte ställa frågor"
"Låt folk skriva ner vad de är bra på och vilka/vilken roll de kan tänka
sig och dela in folk i grupper med roller därefter. Det är jättesvårt att välja
en passande roll utan någon erfarenhet als. "
The general level of completion is good, but I felt that many students underperformed in the term paper. Attendance was quite poor both at lectures and oral project presentations.
The course objectives are published online.
Although I have held this course before, the size of the class was more than
double previous years. This created difficulties with student contact and oral
presentation of project work.
To create adequate time for oral presentations it is essential that no more
than 12 project groups are supported.
Some project groups had difficulties getting sufficient support from external
project providers. Some projects were poorly specified. Two industrial project
providers went bankrupt and withdrew all student support. The recessionary
economic environemnt probably impacted the course negatively in terms of industrial
contact.
Better filtering of external projects for quality and appropriateness.
Format project information into a simple handbook for students, including student
tips.