Teaching software design and testing

This paper describes a course entitled "Software Design and Testing", covering both its conceptual design and the outcomes from teaching it. The course is normally taken in semester four of either a Bachelor of Information Technology or a Bachelor of Engineering (Software) degree program (both eight semesters in length). Students enter the course with some programming experience (in Smalltalk, Ada, C or Java) but without experience with programs of nontrivial size or with cooperative software development. Overall, students find this a challenging and demanding course that introduces them to many new ideas. They are required to work cooperatively in teams of three or four, with their final grade partly determined by team effectiveness. Although some students have difficulty working in a team, the overall effect is very positive. Many students acknowledge that they do not appreciate the potential difficulties of working in a team until they experience them first hand.