A new software engineering course for undergraduate and graduate students

This paper describes a new introductory level course in software engineering for aerospace engineering students. It offers the fundamental concepts of software engineering to senior-level and graduate aerospace engineering students through lectures and a team project. The material in the lectures support the timeline of the team project. The class project differs from projects of other software engineering courses because each student works in a small group representing one process in a software development model, and each group is part of a large team. The instructor acted as a customer who indicated system needs. The project goal was to develop a small software system for a teleoperated mobile robot. The team project reinforced the concepts from the class and tried to demonstrate how software engineering works in a simulated industrial environment. The feedback from students in the class was evaluated through a survey and a focus group discussion (presented in a separate paper). Courses such as these are essential since software and computing can be 50% of the cost of modern aircraft and spacecraft. In order to make aerospace engineering degrees as useful as possible, modern curriculum must include material beyond the traditional aerodynamics, structures, propulsion, and dynamics/control areas.