Klaus Bothe

On the assessment and self‐assessment in a students teamwork based course on software engineering

For the previous 7 years, under the auspices of a “Stability Pact of South‐Eastern Europe” and DAAD, a joint project for developing an undergraduate course in “Software Engineering” has been conducted. The intention of the project was to enable a usage of shared materials for software engineering courses at wide range of universities in countries participating in the project. During school year 2004/2005: for the first time the same course; with the same case study; and the same assignments; have been conducted at the Humboldt University Berlin and University of Novi Sad. In this article, we share some of the experiences obtained during conducting the same course for the last several school years.

Reverse engineering: the challenge of large-scale real-world educational projects

The contributions of this paper are twofold: first, a reverse engineering (RE) project is described while other educational projects based on existing systems have mainly focused on maintenance. Second, by means of an RE project, it became possible to approach real-world conditions more closely than in other types of educational software engineering (SE) projects.

Wiki usage in team assignments for computer science students

Collaboration in contemporary teaching and learning practice can be highly supported and improved via usage of information and communication technology, even when it comes to solving complex team assignments in university courses. One of the possibly best types of software tools for such purposes is wikis. This paper presents the experimental usage of wiki as means of introducing collaborative activities in two completely different courses on the undergraduate level of Computer Science studies -- an introductory eBusiness course for freshmen, and the advanced course in Software Engineering for final year students.

A View on a Successful International Educational Project in Software Engineering

In this paper, a successful and fruitful joint project will be presented. The project joins participants from 9 countries and from 15 universities. Since it started in 2001, this project entitled “Software Engineering: Computer Science Education and Research Cooperation” helped participants to gain excellent, up to date educational material, apply modern teaching methods, exchange experiences with other participants, and work jointly on the further development of lectures, case-studies, assignments, examination questions, and other necessary elements of a course. Project works under auspices of Stability Pact of South-Eastern Europe, and is supported by DAAD. The project started with the creation of a common beginning course in “Software Engineering”, but over time it grew and the number of other courses was developed. Finished almost completely are the courses in “Object-oriented programming”, “Software Project Management”, “Advanced Compiler Construction”, and “Data Structures and Algorithms”, and some other courses are under development. Aside from the educational collaboration, project members also developed good scientific cooperation, and published several research papers.

SETT-Net: a network for software engineering training and teaching

The intention of the SETT-Net is to enable the usage of shared training and teaching resources for a software engineering course in eight schools and in four countries. The network is completely Web-based. It consists of a centre point at Humboldt University in Berlin and four national centres, in Berlin, Novi Sad, Plovdiv and in Skopje. We present the syllabus, the teaching materials of the joint SE course, the network architecture and its contents.

Interactive tool-based production of multilingual teaching and learning materials

During an educational project, where partners from 12 universities of eight countries jointly developed teaching and learning materials, it became necessary to produce language variants of these materials. This process is supported by a newly developed tool. The tool introduces a disciplined and economical strategy to develop multilingual teaching and learning objects and to reduce translation efforts. It keeps translations consistent with the help of an internal dictionary dynamically maintained during tool usage. Furthermore, the tool provides for a common layout of all language variants and in that way enhances maintainability of the material. The tool is applied interactively by a technical translator to avoid quality loss resulting from automatic translation.

The structure of SETT-Net

SETT-Net is an international Web-based network designed to enable training and teaching of a joint software engineering course. It consists of a Centre Point at the Humboldt University in Berlin and four National Centres: in Bulgaria, Germany, Macedonia, and in Serbia and Montenegro. The network is free for all lecturers and students at the participating schools in the project. Parts of the contents are password protected. This paper presents the network structure, and the contents of the main site and the national sites, as well as the first experience of its application.

Gender influences on studying computer science: non-EU Balkan case

In this paper, an analysis of gender related influences for studying of computer science in several countries of the west Balkan region was conducted. A large survey with about 120 different options within 33 questions offered has been created and inquiry has been carried out on a considerable sample of students. Students were of both gender, and relationships and links between answers of these groups were considered. What is more important, students came from four different countries, members of a joint educational DAAD project. The survey data was available for students from Serbia, FYR of Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Albania. The obtained results were analyzed and we present the most interesting opinions of both female and male population of students. In short, our analysis shows more maturity within the female population of students, and more vanity within male population. Yet in general, both genders are quite satisfied with their choice of profession, and look into the bright future, by their opinion.

Teaching Java through different courses: multi-country experiences

Under the auspices of DAAD (German Foundation) educationa project, a subproject devoted to teaching of Java programming language started in 2004. The intention of the subproject was to enable usage, of commonly prepared teaching material for different Java topics, at wide range of university courses in participating countries. During last two years advanced Java topics were selected and appropriate teaching material was produced. As well, teachers from different universities and countries started to use common material in wide range of courses. In this paper we share some of results and experiences collected during the existence of the subproject.

Developing a Joint Software Engineering Master’s Curriculum Across Countries: Report on a Multi-national Educational Project

Abstract Developing a joint curriculum across different institutions is a unique and novel initiative to harmonize university education in Europe, sharing the efforts of curriculum development (hence reducing their cost), and to improve the quality of education. Our ongoing project covers seven partner institutions from five countries — four in the role of beneficiary partners and three have an advisory role. This paper outlines the principles adopted in the creation and development of an MSc in Software Engineering that is compliant with the Bologna agreement.