Academia-academia-industry collaborations on software engineering projects using local-remote teams

Abstract

It is widely recommended by both academia and industry that today's technology and software engineering students be well prepared for industry before graduation, especially given global outsourcing and other trends. Various methods have been developed to ensure student readiness, including co-ops and capstone courses. These approaches increasingly use real-world projects for their benefits to industry and often to the community at large. In this paper, we argue that students can be prepared to effectively join industry and keep the US technology workforce competitive through a curriculum that includes a theoretical software engineering course with real-world projects and the collaboration of paired teams across two or more universities. We present a case study of a successful teaching experience that features these aspects, and describe the outcome along with the unique perspective of a participating student.