Bringing Industrial Methods to the Classroom

Effective, professional quality work is expected of software engineering graduates, but may be difficult to teach via normal academic programs. This paper postulates that, in order to effectively prepare students for professional work, several key elements from the industrial world are beneficial: teamwork rather than a focus on individual accomplishments; setting an expectation for professional grade student work products; fairly rigorous guidelines for the format and general content of work products; knowledge of up-to-date work practices, and opportunities for rigorous review of interim work products. Although teamwork has frequently been discussed in software engineering education forums, the others have generally not been. They can be greatly enhanced by industry involvement.