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Case Studies as Assessment Tools in Software Engineering ClassroomsAuthors: Kirti Garg,Vasudeva Varma Conference: 22nd IEEE-CS International Conference of Software Engineering Education and Training(CSEET'09), Feb 2009, Hyderabad, India Date: 2009-05-27 Report no: IIIT/TR/2009/84 AbstractSoftware Engineering (SE) courses intend to prepare students for their professional responsibilities as Software Engineers. A major part of SE jobs involves solving of authentic and complex problems by applying varied SE knowledge and skills as well as skills such as problem solving, critical thinking, use of various tools, communication skills Typically SE courses are offered as one or two semester course as part of a Computer Science Curriculum. Thus SE courses can have multiple and complex learning goals. Assessment tools and methods such as multiple choice questions, essay type questions, etc. appear to be obvious choices of assessment due to ease in administering, but are not always an optimal choice for such a SE course with large number of learning goals. Case studies in Software Engineering have been used as research and investigation tools since long, and as teaching tool recently, but not as assessment tools. In this paper, we describe and demonstrate the use of case studies in SE as assessment tools in Software Engineering classes. We developed a set of parameters that are derived from the course learning goals and help in objective as well as easy evaluation of case studies solutions. This work reasons that carefully designed case studies can be effective as well as efficient assessment tools for Software Engineering education such that they are not only closely aligned with learning goals, but consist of many characteristics of an ideal assessment tool in accordance with Learning Sciences. Full paper: pdf Centre for Software Engineering Research Lab |
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