Large-Scale Visualization Projects for Teaching Software Engineering

The University of Stuttgart's software engineering major complements the traditional computer science major with more practice-oriented education. Two-semester software projects in various application areas offered by the university's different computer science institutes are a successful building block in the curriculum. With this realistic, complex project setting, students experience the practice of software engineering, including software development processes, technologies, and soft skills. In particular, visualization-based projects are popular with students. Such projects offer them the opportunity to gain profound knowledge that would hardly be possible with only regular lectures and homework assignments.

Project Basics

The projects are intended to be like a role-play of a principal-agent relationship. The students are the contractor. They fill roles typical in a software project, such as the project manager, quality assurance staff, configuration management staff, and software architects and developers. The customer is a faculty member who behaves realistically in that he or she has imprecise goals and occasionally changes his or her mind.³ This has led the designers of the curriculum to involve faculty who aren't necessarily software engineering specialists.