Teaching an Introductory Software Engineering Course in a Computer Science Program

Though software engineering courses are taught within different types of programs, one common program is the computer science program. Within this program, most often there is an introductory course in software engineering, which is often the only course in this area that a student will take in his/her program. Due to the wide scope of the subject and the constraint of one course only, this introductory course remains one of the hardest courses to teach, and leads to the possibility of a variety of possible goals for such a course. In this talk we view a course like a software program-having a pre-condition and a post-condition, and then discuss the various possible pre and post conditions of such a course, and some issues related to teaching the course.