Adding Software Engineering Emphasis to an ECE curriculum

This paper describes a project conducted at Oklahoma Christian (OC) University to add software engineering emphasis to an existing Electrical Engineering (EE) and Computer Engineering (CompE) Program. Over a 2 year period the OC Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) department received input from alumnae, our ABET Industry Advisory Board, and other stakeholders that indicated there is an increased value to EE and CompE graduates for having greater knowledge in areas related to software engineering. In response two faculty members from the ECE department conducted a survey of alumnae and local engineering industry to gauge the need and determine what software engineering topics should be emphasized in an undergraduate ECE program to prepare EE and CompE students for entry level work involving high levels of software engineering responsibilities. The investigation confirmed the need for added software engineering topics and provided insights which guided topic selection. The results of that investigation are presented here. The OC ECE department modified EE and CompE curriculum to add specific software engineering topics to existing courses in order to create a logical progression of software engineering education through a series of courses. Several courses now contain relevant additional software content to prepare students for entrylevel engineering work. This content is coordinated across the curriculum to build from the junior through senior courses and makes use of required and elective courses. These are now formally identified together and, if taken together, provide an emphasis in the software engineering topics that were requested by local engineering industry. The changes to curriculum are presented in this paper. OC’s Electrical and Computer engineering students can now graduate with an emphasis in software engineering and will be better prepared for the high degree of software related engineering work they are likely to face as they begin their careers.