Distance Learning and Web-based Education

Both software engineering academic and training courses have been available through various distance means over the years. A early example was the Software Engineering Institute’s Video Dissemination Project begun the early 1990s, which provided two series of courses: one to support academic instruction and the other to continue education.

With the advent of the Internet and advanced multimedia technology, software engineering distance education has increased significantly. Synchronous and asynchronous distance education and allows for increased schedule flexibility for the participant, and it also helps to satisfy the demand for such courses despite the limited number of instructors available.

Carnegie Mellon offers its entire MSE degree online through the use various media. The first group of Carnegie Mellon students to graduate with an MSE without ever setting foot on campus was in August 2000.

A survey of Master’s level software engineering programs in the United States by Bagert and Mu found that of the 43 schools that had ‘‘software engineering” as the name of the Master’s degree, 24 schools deliver the programs only face-to-face, three only online, and 16 schools provide for both or have a curriculum that has both face-to-face and online courses.

Conclusions and Future Directions. Only a few years ago, the number of software engineering degree programs were consistently increasing, giving great hope for the future. However, the rate of increase of such programs has slowed [e.g., its status in the United States was discussed by Bagert and Chenoweth]. A unique opportunity in software engineering education is before the computing and engineering disciplines, one that has the potential to open both to tremendous possibilities.

However, this can be done only by a joint effort of the computing and engineering communities, just as BCS and IEE did in the United Kingdom almost 20 years ago. In other countries, the results of such attempted collaborations in other countries have been at best mixed.

Industrial education, both through training courses and from collaborations with academic institutions, will continue to expand as the demand for software engineers also continues to increase. This requires the continuing education of software professionals as well as the retraining of workers with backgrounds from related disciplines.

The need for more collaboration between industry/university is especially important in the face of surveys that demonstrate a distinct gap between academic educational outcomes and the industrial knowledge required for software professionals.

It is likely that distance education will be impacting all academic and professional disciplines in the near future. In addition, distance learning will be especially important for the software engineering community as long as instructor shortages remain.

Finally, perhaps the most critical step required for the future of software engineering education and training is the need for a true internationalization of major initiatives. Many projects discussed in this article were successful efforts that were developed within a single country. The SE 2004 project was notable in part for the fact that it went to great lengths to be a document truly international in development and scope.

Not enough communication of the successes of a particular country to the international community exists; for instance, the accomplishments of BCS and IEE regarding software engineering education in the United Kingdom over past dozen years is largely unknown in the United States even today.

The challenge is to use the Internet, the World Wide Web, and other technological innovations (which were, after all, developed in large part by software professionals!) to advance the discipline itself even more by creating an effective and truly global software engineering education and training community.