The four Ps in an undergraduate software engineering course

There has been much discussion in the past decade of more efficient ways to teach the practical contents of the introductory software engineering course. This paper introduces a teaching platform, the SE-class platform, which exposes the students to a special and stimulating learning environment. The concept behind the SE-class platform is the Four Ps in software engineering: people, project, product and process. The purpose of the platform is to familiarize second year CIS students in four-year college programs with software engineering concepts within one semester and to train them in as much fundamental software engineering knowledge and skills as possible, including core topics in each of the four Ps. The platform adopts the Unified Software Development Process. Compared with using assignments and team-projects in the traditional way for second year CIS majors, the platform requires all students in one class to participate in a single customized real-life project. The project is complicated and large enough to expose students to many key software development disciplines that are harder to teach through small projects. In the platform, students also participate in project management.