Assessing the Impact of the Distributed Software Development Course on the Careers of Young Software Engineers

Abstract

Various software engineering (SE) curricula in higher education have started including courses on global software engineering (GSE), carried out as internationally distributed project-based courses. These courses, known for their closeness to “real-world” work experience, emphasize the importance of involving industry partners as customers and focus on soft skills essential for employment, an aspect often neglected in engineering education. However, not many such courses are long-lived or consistent in form throughout the years, making their impact and relevance hard to assess. The Distributed Software Development course (DSD), currently run among three universities in Croatia, Italy, and Sweden, has now been carried out for 15 years consecutively, providing a rich source of in-course and post-graduation data. To evaluate the students’ experiences of the course after they graduate and start working, a study has been carried out among former DSD students from the University of Zagreb, Croatia. Its goal is to understand how useful this course was in students’ early careers, both in first and current employment, as well as related factors at the workplace (magnitude of distributed collaboration, company size). The study results show the relevance of such distributed course experiences for future employment, as well as the importance of building upon soft skills as part of the software engineering curricula. Higher education institutions are invited to consider including such courses in the software engineering curriculum, for the benefit of their students and, indirectly, students’ future employers.

Towards Active Evidence-Based Learning in Engineering Education: A Systematic Literature Review of PBL, PjBL, and CBL

“…Tasks, such as a written report, a prototype, homework, exams, the implementation, the presentation, or the final product, are evaluated, as well as the team performance [83,111]. The evaluation takes place in different moments during the implementation process and different formats, sometimes using instruments such as rubrics [116,117].…”

An Eco-System Approach to Project-Based Learning in Software Engineering Education

“…• Teamwork [1], [2], [4], [12], [13] • Problem solving and critical thinking [3], [4], [14] • Team internal and external communication [2], [3] • Self-directed learning [1], [7] • Project management [1], [3], [13] Furthermore, there are reports of positive impact from project-based courses on students' attitude towards the software engineering discipline [14] and supporting students in making career decisions [1], [4], [5]. In stark contrast to "soft" skills, reports on technical skills from project-based courses are comparably rare.…”

“…• Entrepreneurship [12] • SCRUM [6] • Global Software Engineering (GSE) [5] • Free open source software and altruism [14] • Reflection-based experience building [15] A recently published literature review also shows that project-based courses are often used to introduce current industry trends into the curriculum, among which Agile development is the most common: out of 126 reviewed papers, 104 mention the use of project-based learning in this context [8].…”

“…This has been found to increase the motivation of students [6], [12] and provide a more realistic experience of practical elements of a software engineering project [8]. Other motivational factors include varied ways of working compared to non-project-based courses [12] and that a completed project-based course can serve as a qualification for future employment [1], [5], [13].…”

Pairing-Based Approach to Support Understanding of Object-Oriented Concepts and Programming

“…While Lagus et al [9] suggest transfer-learning methods to predict programming course outcomes. Bosnić et al [10] studied the impact of the distributed software development course among software engineering fresh graduates. Finally, Yeomans et al [11] compared the different perspectives between students and professional programmers on challenging concepts in programming.…”