Masters-Level Software Engineering Education and the Enriched Student Context

Currently, adult higher education software engineering pedagogy isolates the student in a controlled environment during delivery, with application of their learning temporally distant from their professional practice. Delivering software engineering teaching that is immediately relevant to professional practice remains an open challenge. In this paper, we discuss a new pedagogical model which addresses this problem by embedding the validation of the student´s learning within their rich professional context. We discuss our experience of applying the model to the design and delivery of a new post-graduate software development module, a core component in our new software engineering Masters qualification at the Open University, UK, a market leader in adult higher education at a distance.