A comprehensive, integrated three-semester software engineering sequence

At Texas Tech, USA, eight software-related courses in the computer science curriculum have evolved into an integrated software engineering component of the undergraduate curriculum. The most tightly coupled of the courses in this sequence are three junior/senior level courses: “software engineering”; “senior project design”; and “senior project implementation laboratory”. A common software engineering operations manual and set of software tools (sometimes developed previously within this course sequence) are used for projects within this three-course sequence, providing the “feel” of a small software development company. Various views aspects of software engineering are compared contrasted within this sequence. By integrating various software engineering principles within either the eight-course segment, and in particular the three junior/senior level courses listed above, the software component of the computer science curriculum has a cohesiveness and unity that it never had previously. Students see how the various aspects of software development relate to each other, and how they relate to the overall whole. This paper provides some details of the junior/senior level course content