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Software Engineering Research, Management and Applications pp 183–195Cite as

Introducing Critical Thinking to Software Engineering Education

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Part of the Studies in Computational Intelligence book series (SCI,volume 496)

Abstract

Software and its development processes are changing continuously pervading our daily life, new and diverse techniques and approaches are being proposed and the software industry is eager to adopt the ones that will provide competitive advantage. The diversity of these new techniques and approaches and the diversity of clients and contexts in the software industry, requires software developers to have the ability to judge correctly and to discriminate successfully among these. These skills need to be taught to software developers in the course of their formal undergraduate education. However, traditional approaches in software engineering education (SEEd) are mostly inadequate in equipping students with these unusual and diverse skills. This study, as part of a larger study aiming to develop a model for assessing organizational learning capabilities of software development organizations and teams, proposes and implements a novel educational approach to SEEd combining different methodologies, namely lecturing, project development and critical thinking. The theoretical background and studies on each approach employed in this study are provided, together with the rationales of applying them in SEEd. Student opinions and instructor observations demonstrate that the proposed course structure is a positive step towards the aforementioned goals.

Keywords

  • Software engineering education
  • critical thinking
  • practicum
  • SQ4R

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  • DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-00948-3_12
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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Statistics and Computer Science Department, Başkent University, 06810, Ankara, Turkey

    Oumout Chouseinoglou

  2. Electrical and Electronics Engineering Department, Middle East Technical University, 06531, Ankara, Turkey

    Semih Bilgen

Authors
  1. Oumout Chouseinoglou
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  2. Semih Bilgen
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Oumout Chouseinoglou .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Software Engineering & Information, Central Michigan University, Mt. Pleasant, 48859, Michigan, USA

    Roger Lee

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Chouseinoglou, O., Bilgen, S. (2014). Introducing Critical Thinking to Software Engineering Education. In: Lee, R. (eds) Software Engineering Research, Management and Applications. Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 496. Springer, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00948-3_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00948-3_12

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