Balancing Theory and Practice in Software Engineering Education – A PBL, toolset based approach

This paper presents an interdisciplinary approach designed to join theoretical foundations required in software engineering with practice required for professional performance in software industry. Although this is a recurring issue on software engineering education, students still have difficulties in dealing with software development environments that are usually more complex than any software projects they have worked at university courses. We developed an approach aligned with market demands and theoretical requirements in software engineering education that incorporates principles of Project Based Learning (PBL) and Agile Methods. It aims to support development of student technical and soft skills in three different, but related, disciplines: Software Engineering Practice, Database Practice and Software Project Management. We describe a set of seven recommendations on how we used largely adopted tools in software development industry in order to develop student technical and soft skills. We describe two case studies: (1) an exploratory case study with three professors and 24 students involving multiple projects; and (2) a confirmatory case study with three professors and 15 students involving a large-scale project. As a result, we point seven recommendations for tool adoption on capstone courses based on lessons learned.