Authors : F.A. Egbokhare and S.C. Chiemeke
Abstract: Software engineering is a capstone course for students in final year Computer Science department at University of Benin. The course is a practicsal course and it aims to educate new generation managers, planners, analysts and programmers in the promise and reality of information system development. One of the authors has been teaching software engineering for three consecutive years at the Computer Science department at University of Benin. In the first two years, the course was taught using the traditional classroom approach. Last academic session, a new approach was tried which combined the project based learning with the classroom teaching. In this study, we present the experience of combining the traditional method with the project-based learning approach on teaching software engineering. The waterfall model was adopted to demonstrate the phases of developing information systems and the students were expected to present their reports at the end of every phase. The best report/presentation in each project was then presented to the class as the case study for that phase. This approach not only rouses the curiosity of students but it also challenges them to develop knowledge and creative skills and abilities that will remain with them throughout their career as computer professionals.
F.A. Egbokhare and S.C. Chiemeke , 2007. Adopting Project-Based Learning (PBL) as an Alternative Method to Teach Software Engineering . Asian Journal of Information Technology, 6: 866-869.