University education for practical software engineering
In and effort to produce highly skilled engineers in business processes and information science/information technologies, Department of Information and Intellectual Systems Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Hiroshima Institute of Technology, has introduced training courses that use IBM Rational Rose for learning the UML technology. In today's market, the industries and universities need to work together to meet the growing need for highly skilled software engineers. UML education is one of the University's efforts to pursue collaboration with the industry.
Adopted Rational Rose at the establishment of Department of Information and Intellectual Systems Engineering
Hiroshima Institute of Technology is located at a hill overlooking Seto islands of Hiroshima city. From 1998, the activity of the Institute has been designated as one of the sites by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology for the program for encouraging private universities to transfer themselves to higher technology institutions. Since then, the Institute has been active on research and education that will surpass the requirements for the program. The Institute has two faculties*, Faculty of Engineering and Faculty of Environmental studies as well as two graduate schools, Graduate School of Science and Technology, Graduate School of Engineering and Graduate School of Environmental Studies. (*From 2006, Faculty of Informatics will be come in the Institute)
With a goal of merging manufacturing and information technologies, Department of Information and Intellectual Systems Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, has been focusing on producing highly skilled "intelligent manufacturing engineers" in business processes, information science and information technology and offers comprehensive education on Information Processing, Management Science, and Information Systematization Technology.
Training: Building UML-based information systems
In April 2000, at the establishment of Department of Information and Intellectual Systems Engineering, it decided to adopt Rational Rose (Windows version). In an effort to meet the goal stated above, the Department prepared courses for educating UML technology. The students are given as many chances as possible to learn about UML, and are given training courses to use Rational Rose. As the Department stresses hands-on learning, all students in the Department purchase notebook computers (Linux/Windows dual-boot machine) at the second semester of the first year and start to use them for classes.
In "Information Systematization Training and Experiment" for third year (2nd semester), students build UML-based information systems as a proof of accomplishment of all their work. They build systems on such themes as network distributed information systems, business-process oriented information systems, e-commerce systems, and image processing systems. This is a group work of four to five students each, for a total of 24 hours (8, 180-minute classes).
Courses with strong focus on UML
The major goal of Department of Information and Intellectual Systems Engineering is to produce highly skilled, professional software engineers. In April 2001, one year after its establishment, it has built a working environment for UML training program on student's notebook computers and started to use UML for the second year's classes. In April 2003, when the Institute started its full operation, the number of students who installed Rational Rose in their computers has reached four hundred and fifty. In April 2004, the courses were revised and the new courses are being offered. The major courses featuring UML are as follows:
First year (2nd semester): Object Oriented Language and Object Oriented Language Training
Second year (1st semester): Information Systems Development Technology and UML Training
Second year (2nd semester): Software Engineering
Third year (1st semester): Information Systems Development
Third year (2nd semester): Information Systematization Training and Experiment
Fourth year: Graduate Study
"Information Systems Development Technology" for second year (1st semester), for example, consists of lectures and trainings using notebook computers. The 22.5-hour course (15, 90-minute classes) teaches such subjects as "Information Systems Development Process", "UML and CASE tool", "UML (use case diagrams, static structure diagrams, behavior diagrams, interaction diagrams, implementation diagrams, and others)", "Systems Design by UML", and "UML and Programming Language (code generation from class diagram and class diagram generation from code)".
According to our test result on the introductory level UML specification for the course's students, 51% students scored over 90%, 37% students scored between 60% and 90%, showing a high level of achievement in learning UML technology.
In building network distributed information systems, for example, students follow the actual workflow, from initial planning, design, programming, through final test. They describe each stage with UML and documents. The last class is for simulation. The task is "to build a system that collects and distributes temperature data in real time from each server placed in various locations", where server OS is Linux but language and client OS can be any.
As each group builds its own system to simulate the real systems, the students can acquire practical skills through the process.
Need for collaboration of universities and enterprises
Because one of the goals of university education is to produce individuals with concrete basic skills as well as skills to handle issues of varying degrees, students need to acquire broad range of specialized knowledge in addition to basic one. In many cases, however, most classes tend to be mass-oriented. Many students attend classes without clear goals or motivations except for acquiring credits. Naturally, their knowledge remains too shallow to be practical in the real world and thus they are far from ready for work. Universities are struggling to find a way to fill the gap between education and the real world.
The Department has started various efforts to meet such challenges. One of them is to encourage its students to join various contests and take certifying examinations to give them clearer goals.
Another effort is collaborations and exchanges with various enterprises. The Department invites lecturers from enterprises to introduce to its students the frontlines of information systems development and actual examples of UML applications. Also, the Department is planning to introduce internship programs and company visits as an initiative from the University.
For educating students to be higher skilled software engineers, universities and enterprises need to work together. The Department will continue to pursue closer ties with the related industries to better educate students for future software development.
「情報システム開発技術」カリキュラム
