Students' perceptions from an integrated software engineering and databases course

Abstract

The project-based learning approach has proven its value, as students can work on complex, real-life problems that allow for meaningful learning (Breiter et al. in Comput Sci Educ 18(2):165-180, 2005; Sung and Sunny in Learning through collaborative design: a learning strategy on the internet, vol 3, pp F4F-3, 2001; Coupal and Boechler in The value of agile in experiential learning of software development, pp 113-120, 2007) [1,2,3]. Since 2019, the Computing Science Department of the University of Costa Rica offers a project-based course integrating the subjects of Software Engineering and Databases. We surveyed the students in each sprint to gain insight into the students’ perception of the value and difficulty of technical challenges, teamwork, planning, and negotiating with the client. We collected data from four course instances and 79 students. The descriptive statistics analysis revealed that the perceived difficulty of addressing technical challenges was higher than the perceived difficulty of other dimensions, across sprints, and course instances. Statistical tests comparing the first and third sprints were performed. Further studies are needed to validate, complement, or contrast our findings. Evaluating students’ perception of different project aspects is useful in identifying the aspects that are more difficult for students throughout the course.