Facilitating Cross & Beyond Course Project-Based Software Engineering Learning Experiences

Abstract

Throughout each academic semester, software engineering students are often provided with opportunities to explore open-ended project-based activities. Within the confines of specific courses, many of these explorations have resulted in interesting and impactful, partially or fully engineered software solutions. However, after student-developed solutions are explored, tested, and delivered within a classroom setting it has been the author’s experience that they often don’t progress beyond the course in which students explored and created them in. The results of this are missed opportunities for innovation as well as missed opportunities for further creative and collaborative explorations. This work-in-progress explores the following question: what could a model, process, and/or framework look like that would enable software engineering educators to create a learning environment that facilitates continued exploration, collaboration, and iteration of project-based student work beyond individual courses? This paper will describe an exploratory hybrid framework called ORhiDeCy that the author has designed and has been exploring in his courses over the last several years. This paper describes ORhiDeCy, an example of its successful use in the author’s software engineering teaching practice, collaborator and student feedback, and the author’s reflections and ideas for continued explorations.