Adapting to online teaching in software engineering courses

Abstract

The COVID-19 worldwide pandemic caused sudden and unexpected changes in how we teach software engineering and other university courses. This paper presents an empirical study that aims to improve our understanding on how the assessment of student learning changed, in response to the transition from in-class to online courses. A questionnaire was distributed to instructors across the globe. The results indicate that the evaluation methodologies for most reported learning objectives have changed. Not surprising, in-class oral presentations and in-class exams are no longer used by the instructors for evaluations. We observed a trend of having fewer exams and more project-related evaluations after the transition. Not all instructors changed the way they evaluated student learning after the transition, however the majority reported their effort in student learning assessment increased after the transition, whether they made changes in methodologies or not.