Establishing a Higher Degree of Student Self-Efficacy in Software Engineering

Abstract

Each fall when new students enter the Software Engineering program, the majority lack any idea of what they want to do with their degree after graduation. In addition to this, most students lack the technical background to confidently seek out independent projects to explore different career areas. The goal for this project was to develop guided lab modules to help students discover what they are passionate about earlier in their academic career and establish the confidence needed to further explore a given interest. Development of these modules consisted of finding tutorials that were engaging as well as able to be completed in a short period of time, and turning them into guided labs. The development of these modules provides a significant benefit to Iowa State and the Software Engineering program since nothing like this currently exists for the program to use. Future work on this project would include the execution of these modules as well as conducting a survey to measure their effectiveness at increasing self-efficacy. In conclusion, these modules have the potential to strengthen the Software Engineering program and its graduates by starting them on projects they want to work on earlier in their academic career.