An Investigation of Software Engineering Knowledge of Undergraduate Students

Computer programming (CP) course offered in universities is difficult coupled with insufficient infrastructures and teaching staff. In spite of these, several undergraduate Computer Science (CS) students are increasingly acquiring programming skills and developing commercial applications even without attending formal programming classes. However, software intended for use other than by the developer requires teamwork, the use of software engineering methodologies and quality. What is not known about these undergraduate students is how their programming is learnt or applications developed. This is important in the light of software dependability and cost of failures today. Therefore, this paper investigates how undergraduate CS students learn programming and their software engineering knowledge. The purpose is to gain insights into how knowledge is gained and applied. To accomplish this, the paper conducted a survey utilizing questionnaire and interview on undergraduate students of CS in the University of Venda (UNIVEN). The data collected were analyzed and results quantitatively and qualitatively presented. The results showed that many CS students learned programming via the Internet reusable code, applied development methodology and are aware of software quality during development.