waciumawanjohi
commented
3 years ago Interesting courses! There are a lot of moving pieces to this RFC, I'll try to separate them out.
Context
Software Construction: Object-Oriented Design and Software Construction: Data Abstraction were removed.
Here is the RFC that removed those courses. In that RFC I opined that these courses were redundant and did not need replacing. I don't think we need to evaluate any course on the basis of whether they will replace these two removed courses.
Udacity's Software Architecture & Design is a pretty terrible course from the reviews that I have seen here
This is a GATech OMSCS course, which means we have access to many in depth reviews of the course. The value that students find in the course is in the group projects that GATech organizes for enrolled masters students. The lectures are panned in most every review. As we cannot access the value of the course, I think we should remove it.
Removal
This leaves us analyzing two courses for potential removal: Software Engineering: Introduction and Software Development Capstone Project. These have been discussed before, in an RFC here.
These courses are meant to meet the Software Engineering requirements of the CS2013. Those are discussed here.
Software Engineering: Introduction
Software Engineering: Introduction tackles a fair bit of these topics. Here are the topics from its syllabus:
- Process: Learn about software development processes commonly used in industry, including Traditional approaches (Waterfall and Spiral) and more modern Agile approaches (XP, TDD, and Scrum).
- Specifications: Learn how specifications help customers and software engineering teams communicate. Learn about the process of gathering and validating requirements, and how to create high quality user stories as specifications.
- Testing: Learn about the testing process for large-scale software systems. Deep dive into the intricacies of white box testing and coverage, black box testing and equivalence class partitioning, assertions and testability.
- High Level Design: Learn about high level design guidance to help improve the evolvability and maintainability of software systems over time. Take a closer look at abstraction, technical representations, APIs, REST, coupling and cohesion, and the SOLID design principles.
- Low Level Design: Learn about low level design guidance for implementing software systems. Learn how and when to use the Singleton, Strategy, State, Facade, Decorator, MVC and MVP design patterns.
- Construction: Learn about advanced software construction topics in the context of software engineering, such as non-structural properties, static analysis and linters, automation, code smells, and refactoring.
I do not see similar coverage of these topics in the proposed courses.
On course quality, we have two reviews from Class Central. One positive review here. The second review comes as part of the Capstone course review here where the reviewer mentions the course. While this second reviewer clearly found many issues with the tests in the course (which is not a concern for a student auditing the course), they allow "Generally speaking, I thought the material was interesting enough (and certainly relevant)."
The RFC states that the course requires payment to access. I do not believe this is the case. All edX courses allow free audit access for a set period of time (generally a few months). Anecdotally, I appear to have started this course years ago and I still have access, suggesting that student may retain long term access to the course.
I don't see evidence that we should remove this course, nor that we have identified sufficient resource to replace the course.
Software Development Capstone Project
UBC's Software Development Capstone Project costs $300 has terrible reviews
It does. Those reviews are scorching. There is little indication that the course lives up to its promise. I support removing this course.
Addition
There are four courses suggested for addition to the curriculum. Looking at the descriptions, it seems that they all fall into the CS2013 topic Software Engineering/Software design. In the Software Engineering knowledge area, Software Design is the topic with the most expected learning hours. It would make sense to add more coverage of those topics to the 2 weeks dedicated by Software Engineering: Introduction.
The first 3 courses seem to align well with the CS2013. I would not include the fourth course. I do not see "Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) in two approaches: Web Services (WS*) and Representational State Transfer (REST)" included in the curricular guidelines.
tl;dr
- I support removing Software Development Capstone Project.
- I do not support removing Software Engineering: Introduction.
- I support adding Object-Oriented Design, Design Patterns, Software Architecture.
- I do not support adding Service-Oriented Architecture.
Alaharon123
aayushsinha0706
Problem and Background:
Proposal:
Replace the above-mentioned courses with Software Design and Architecture Specialization by Kenny Wong on Coursera.
The specialization has 4 courses:
1. Object-Oriented Design (4.7 stars)
"This course takes Java beginners to the next level by covering object-oriented analysis and design. You will discover how to create modular, flexible, and reusable software, by applying object-oriented design principles and guidelines. And, you will be able to communicate these designs in a visual notation known as Unified Modelling Language (UML)."
This course covers java, UML, and software design material - and substitutes for the deleted Software Construction courses.
2. Design Patterns (4.7 stars)
"This course extends object-oriented analysis and design by incorporating design patterns to create interactive applications. Through a survey of established design patterns, you will gain a foundation for more complex software applications. Finally, you will identify problematic software designs by referencing a catalog of code smells."
This course curriculum plays nicely with the How to Code courses and also improves Core Programming with design patterns (material that should be covered by Software Engineering: Introduction).
3. Software Architecture (4.5 stars)
"The way that software components — subroutines, classes, functions, etc. — are arranged, and the interactions between them, is called architecture. In this course you will study the ways these architectures are represented, both in UML and other visual tools. We will introduce the most common architectures, their qualities, and tradeoffs. We will talk about how architectures are evaluated, what makes a good architecture, and an architecture can be improved. We'll also talk about how the architecture touches on the process of software development."
This seems like the material covered by Software Engineering: Introduction.
4. Service-Oriented Architecture (4.5 stars)
"Based on an understanding of architectural styles, you will review architectures for web applications, then explore the basics of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) in two approaches: Web Services (WS*) and Representational State Transfer (REST) architecture. "
Short 10 hour course that goes into web development.
All 4 courses have capstone projects in the end which combined can also substitute the UBC $300 Capstone Project
Note: I have not yet taken these courses, but I plan to. I'm making this RFC because the material looks largely similar to the courses we have that are considered to be low quality (2 of which were removed without replacement for being terrible) and the courses mentioned have lots of great reviews.
Duration:
Until September 10th, 2021 (1 Month)