Software design studio: a practical example

We have been generally successful for transferring software engineering knowledge to industry through various forms of education. However, many challenges in software engineering training remain. A key amongst these is how best to energise software engineering education with real-world software engineering practices. This paper describes our experience of delivering a radically different approach based on the notion of a Software Design Studio. The Software Design Studio is both a lab for students engaged in conceiving, designing and developing software products as well as an approach for teaching software engineering in the lab which emphasizes practical hands-on work and experimentation. The feedback on the Software Design Studio – from both staff and students – has been outstanding. Although the programme is designed as a small, elite programme there is interest to see if the teaching methods can be transferred across to the much larger undergraduate programme in Computer Science. In this paper, we provide a detailed description of how our studio works in practice so that others, thinking of taking a studio or studio-inspired approach, can use in designing their own courses.