Social re-pbl: An approach for teaching requirements engineering using pbl, snss, and cloud storages and file-sharing services

Abstract

Requirements engineering process showed that it has the potential to affect software development process and consequently cause unexpected problems in the produced software. Reducing the likelihood of such issues requires proper preparation for software engineering students during their undergraduate studies to reduce the gap between theory and practice. Students must develop the soft skills that are needed to practice software engineering activities, especially requirements engineering. Accordingly, encouraging students to learn and practice requirements engineering concepts and activities are required. Students undertake the requirements engineering course in one semester, where the lecturer focuses on delivering the theoretical concepts to students which creates teacher-centred learning. It is difficult for students to develop the required critical thinking and communication skills that enable them to solve real-world problems in such a teacher-centred environment. This study uses Project-Based Learning (PBL), Social Networking Sites (SNSs) and cloud enhanced communication to design a non-traditional teaching approach to improve students’ learning and to achieve a learner-centred learning environment in a requirements engineering course. The developed approach was applied to a requirements engineering course at our university to investigate its effectiveness and its impact on students’ learning ability. The students in the investigational group learned with the new method; however, the students in the control group learned with the traditional learning method. The results of our experiment show that the proposed approach significantly improved the achievement, motivation and attitude of our students as well as their ability to approach and solve real-world problems.