Teaching Software Systems Thinking at The Open University

Author

Wermelinger, Michel ; Hall, Jon G. ; Rapanotti, Lucia ; Barroca, Leonor ; Ramage, Magnus ; Bandara, Arosha

Author_Institution

Comput. & Commun. Dept., Open Univ., Milton Keynes, UK

Volume

2

fYear

2015

Firstpage

307

Lastpage

310

Abstract

The Open University is a distance-based higher education institution. Most of our students are in employment and study from home, contacting their tutor and fellow students via e-mail and discussion forums. In this paper, we describe our undergraduate and postgraduate modules in the software systems area, how we teach them at a distance, and our focus on shifting our students´ minds into a reflective, critical, holistic socio-technical view of software systems that is relevant to their particular professional contexts.

Keywords

computer aided instruction; computer science education; distance learning; educational institutions; further education; professional aspects; software engineering; teaching; Open University; critical view; discussion forums; distance-based higher education institution; e-mail; holistic socio-technical view; postgraduate modules; professional contexts; reflective view; software system thinking teaching; student employment; undergraduate modules; Context; Information systems; Software engineering; Software systems; Training;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Software Engineering (ICSE), 2015 IEEE/ACM 37th IEEE International Conference on

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ICSE.2015.161

Filename

7202978