Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!gatech!mcnc!uvaarpa!virginia!uvacs!hsd
From: hsd@uvacs.CS.VIRGINIA.EDU (Harry S. Delugach)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Soft eng in 1st yr classes.. pontification
Message-ID: <2330@uvacs.CS.VIRGINIA.EDU>
Date: 4 Apr 88 15:31:10 GMT
References: <555@psu-cs.UUCP> <1434@ur-tut.UUCP> <3415@bunker.UUCP> <5359@utah-cs.UUCP> <36845UH2@PSUVM> <563@psu-cs.UUCP> <1167@pembina.UUCP>
Reply-To: hsd@uvacs.cs.virginia.edu.UUCP (Harry S. Delugach)
Organization: U.Va. CS dept.  Charlottesville, VA
Lines: 57

In article <1167@pembina.UUCP> cdshaw@pembina.UUCP (Chris Shaw) writes:
>
>Phase 2: Give them a hard assignment that you couldn't do in the time allotted.
>To be fair, tell the students this well in advance. There is no sense in
>treating them like children. Give them the straight goods. "This assignment is
>vicious, rough and nasty. It's designed to show you how little you know."
>Make it look superficially simple. Then mark it as if they were all grads.
>
>No mercy.
>
>Threaten that people who hand in nothing (or null answers) fail the
>course. (A threat which you won't carry through, of course)
>
>Hand it back at the beginning of class and wait for the disappointed silence.
>Then solve it in 3 minutes. (If you can manage it. Getting something that the
>uninitiated can't solve and that you can explain in no time will be tricky.)
>.....
>The challenge must have a purpose, which is in this case to teach people the 
>importance of discipline. It will also help them see the difference between
>the toy assignments you handed out earlier and the real stuff they will see
>during employment.

If this is what your "experience" has taught you, then it is a sad commentary
on the state of things in the "real world". Perhaps some of the conditions 
you are trying to simulate are a source of its problems.

The almost belligerent attitude recommended for the instructor-to-be
sends the message to students that "the real world is cold, heartless,
loathe to communicate and cooperate." Sure, there are plenty of places
where this is true, but rather than teaching software engineering as
a "discipline" or a set of survival skills, why not demonstrate the
positive value of communication and cooperation? Unless you think they
don't really have a positive value?

If you want to simulate the real world to teach software engineering,
then have a two-semester, full-time course, where students are taking
nothing but your course. The high degree of commitment to a course that the
disciplinarians require (approximating an employee's commitment to his
employer) is not possible when students are also involved in other
courses.
Subject: Re: Soft eng in 1st yr classes.. pontification
Summary: 
Expires: 
References: <555@psu-cs.UUCP> <1434@ur-tut.UUCP> <3415@bunker.UUCP> <5359@utah-cs.UUCP> <36845UH2@PSUVM> <563@psu-cs.UUCP> <1167@pembina.UUCP>
Sender: 
Reply-To: hsd@uvacs.cs.virginia.edu.UUCP (Harry S. Delugach)
Followup-To: 
Distribution: 
Organization: U.Va. CS dept.  Charlottesville, VA
Keywords: 


-- 
Harry S. Delugach   University of Virginia, Dept. of Computer Science
                    UUCP: ..!uunet!virginia!uvacs!hsd
                    INTERNET: hsd@cs.virginia.edu
                    BITNET: hsd2x@virginia