Complete thesis - Murdoch University

Software Engineering Education KnowledgeThe Software Engineering Education Knowledge (SEEK) defines and documents an SE educationBoK appropriate for guiding the development of undergraduate SE curricula. Itdescribes a set of desired curriculum outcomes and a statement of what every SE graduateshould know. Originally based on the SWEBOK knowledge areas and multiple discussionswith dozens of SEEK area volunteers, SEEK extended that work through its emphasis on theacademic discipline of SE. Once the content of the education knowledge areas were stabilised,topics were identified to be core or elective, and labelled with one of Bloom’s taxonomy levelsas educational objectives. However, only the lower three (ie foundational) levels of learningwere chosen, since they representwhat knowledge may be reasonably learned during an undergraduate education.(Sobel, 2003, p 6)This document was specially designed to support the development of undergraduate SoftwareEngineering curricula, and therefore, is considered a subset of the more generalised BoKrepresentation. One of the ten SEEK knowledge areas is focussed on RE. All except onetopic in this knowledge area are considered either essential or desirable inclusions in curricula,emphasising the importance given to the requirements stage of the software developmentprocess, with 53 core hours from a total of 494 (10.7%) dedicated to it (see Table 2.16).However, the SEEK does not represent the curriculum, but rather provides the foundationfor the design, implementation and delivery of the educational units that make up a softwareengineering curriculum (LeBlanc and Sobel, 2004).Of interest to this discussion is the section describing Software Modeling and Analysis(MAA). The following is quoted from the SEEK:Modeling and analysis can be considered core concepts in any engineering disciplinesince they are essential to documenting and evaluating design decisionsand alternatives. Modeling and analysis is first applied to the analysis, specification,and validation of requirements. Requirements represent the real world needsof users, customers and other stakeholders affected by the system and the capabilitiesand opportunities afforded by software and computing technologies. Theconstruction of requirements includes an analysis of the feasibility of the desiredsystem, elicitation and analysis of stakeholders’ needs, the creation of a precisedescription of what the system should and should not do along with any constraints71