2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Senior Software Engineering Students’ Understanding of Design

Design thinking is an important skill for computer science students because the software engineering field requires professionals to solve open-ended problems. Software Engineering capstone courses aim to teach design thinking to prepare graduates with the skills to work in different environments. Capstone experiences, specifically, build upon prior theoretical learning so that students can practice a software-agnostic process and create solutions with a human-centered focus. Prior research indicates that there is a gap between design in software engineering education and industry, so it is valuable to explore how students understand design thinking. The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore the conceptions that Computer Science students have about design at the beginning of their senior capstone. The participants in this study are 31 students majoring in Computer Science, Secure Computing, or Data-Centric Computing and enrolled in a Software Engineering Capstone course. Students recorded themselves speaking based on a series of reflection prompts. In their first reflection, which is the focus of this paper, the students were asked “How would you define design in computer science?” The transcripts of their responses were analyzed using provisional coding based on prior definitions of Design Thinking from literature. Their responses were used to answer the research question: How do software engineering undergraduate students define design at the beginning of a capstone course? The results of this study indicated that about half of the students demonstrated an understanding that design involves both planning and implementation, though some stages were underrepresented in their responses. This analysis illuminates gaps in knowledge from prior experiences that capstone instructors should focus on covering.

Authors

Dr. Andrea L. Schuman California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo [biography]

Andrea Schuman is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Engineering at Cal Poly. She holds a Ph.D. in Engineering Education and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Tech, and a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Oklahoma. Her research interests include experiential teaching and learning in ECE and global engineering.
Dr. David B Knight http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4576-2490 Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University [biography]

David Knight is a Professor in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech and also serves as Chief of Strategy in the College of Engineering and Special Assistant to the Provost. His research tends to be at the macro-scale, focused on a systems-level perspective of how engineering education can become more effective, efficient, and inclusive, and considers the intersection between policy and organizational contexts. Knight currently serves as the co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Engineering Education.
Mohammed Seyam http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6831-3239 Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University [biography]

Mohammed Seyam is a Collegiate Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at Virginia Tech. He is a researcher and educator in the fields of Software Engineering, Human-Computer Interaction, and Computer Science Education. Additionally, he is the CS Department Coordinator for Experiential Learning, where he leads several initiatives to enhance students’ learning through out-of-classroom experiences, including the CS Study Abroad program. Mohammed has 20+ years of experience in teaching university level courses, and he presented and conducted multiple talks and workshops in different countries. Among other courses, he taught: Software Engineering, Database Systems, Usability Engineering, and Software Project Management.

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 22, 2025, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 25, 2025

For those interested in:

computer science