Towards a generic education pattern of software design courses: An empirical study

Jitong Zhao, Yan Liu, Xiaowen Yang, Yangyang Xu and Zunhe Liu
Tongji University
Shanghai, China

Software design plays an important role in the software development process, which makes it a fundamental and mandatory topic in software engineering education. However, the diversity of design concerns and the wide range of activities involved in the design process bring great challenges to delivering the software design topic effectively, especially when students have diverse cultural and education backgrounds. To enhance the learning process beyond the classroom environment, we utilized, for example, a number of online open resources in our software design course for international students, including open source modelling tools, trial products, emerging research prototypes, and various research papers from digital libraries. Students are required to do intensive practice by using the suggested open materials. Positive feedback has been received about stimulating students’ interest.

To find a more generic education pattern using open resources for software design education, we conducted an empirical study based on data collected during the course delivery process. Students’ class performance, assignment quality, assignment submission time, and educational background were analysed with a data model to explore the potential correlations, and the results were visualized to discover learning patterns. In this study, we found that (1) students show interest in open materials related to their daily lives, such as modelling online role-play games; (2) students with various professional backgrounds differ in the quality of their performance as reflected in assignment performance; and (3) scenario-based modelling practice can help students to understand knowledge more quickly and easily. The results indicate the key factors for an open and generic education pattern of software design courses. It is also expected that this approach will be used for better software design course planning.