Experiences Translating Project-Based Software Engineering Courses into Online Courses

Online education has seen an enormous growth in the last few years. In this paper we describe the design of three project-centric Software Engineering courses in an undergraduate software engineering program to be delivered online. The study examined three courses offered in face-to-face and online environments. The course goals, structure, learning objectives, and assessments were exactly the same. The courses were designed with hands-on and project-based activities in a cooperative learning environment using a Software enterprise pedagogical model. The paper presents a comparison of student performance on various course outcomes, working in teams, success/failure rates and lessons learned from translating a face-to-face course into an online course. These results can be useful to other educators and institutions in how to improve student learning outcomes and learner satisfaction in online environments and further improve quality of online course offerings.