Teaching evidence-based software engineering to university students

Evidence-based software engineering (EBSE) describes a process of identifying, understanding and evaluating findings from research and practice-based experience. This process aims at improving software engineering decisions. For the last three years, EBSE has been taught to university students at Hedmark University College, Rena, Norway. The motivation for the EBSE-course is that it is essential for the students, as future practitioners, to learn how to base important software engineering decisions on the systematic and critical evaluation of the best available evidence. The main purpose of this paper is to inspire and support other universities in their work on developing their own EBSE-courses. For this purpose we report on how our course has been organized and what lessons have been learned. There are currently no studies available on the effects of teaching EBSE and, as far as we know, only we have gained practice-based experience. To acquire more knowledge about the costs and benefits of teaching EBSE we hope that other universities will develop their own EBSE-courses and report their experience.