Using Quality Audits to Assess Software Course Projects

Abstract

Assessing software engineering course projects should evaluate the achievement of proposed goals, as well as the compliance with mandated standards and processes. This might require the examination of a significant volume of materials, following a consistent, repetitive and effective procedure, even for small projects. Quality assurance must be performed according to similar requirements. This paper discusses the use of quality audits, a comprehensive quality assurance procedure, as a tool for the assessment of course projects.

Learning from students' mistakes in Software Engineering courses

“…Each defect found is recorded in an inspection report with its description, the place where it was found, and severity. The defect severity classification can be [3]: critical (the defect reflects the absence of an essential requirement or prevents the use of the product), major (the defect reflects the absence of an important requirement or affects, but not prevents the use of the product) or minor (all other problems, such as documentation errors). Grade is defined as 100% minus the weighted penalties for defects.…”

“…Biggs [10] argues that self and peer assessment can provide a close link between the assessment and the intended learning outcome of working in a team. Pádua [3], [13], shows an objective and effective way to assess team projects results through quality audits, ensuring fairness and feedback and providing visibility into the progress of the projects.…”

“…Assessment allows us to quantify how successful a team project was, considering the requirements and the prescribed process, by scheduled milestones [3]. In this paper, we use the results of quality audits to assess the team projects.…”

Measuring complexity, effectiveness and efficiency in software course projects

“…The students started with simple CRUD use cases, later developing progressively more complex functions. Some measurements collected from those projects were discussed in previous papers [2,3,4]. Here, we compare detailed data from the first four classes, held from 2002 to 2005, totaling 13 teams.…”

Um roteiro para o ensino de qualidade de arquitetura de software guiado por requisitos não funcionais.

“…Segundo Nunes (2011), é importante enfatizar que, na aprendizagem significativa, as novas informações, mesmo que não tenham feito todas as pontes possíveis com os conceitos existentes na estrutura cognitiva do estudante, podem progressivamente ir se interconectando umas com as outras, por meio do trabalho intelectual do estudante, que busca e estabelece essas relações.…”