A Design Tool Used to Quantitatively Evaluate Student Projects

Selig, Calvin and Henry, Sallie M. (1987) A Design Tool Used to Quantitatively Evaluate Student Projects. Technical Report TR-87-27, Computer Science, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Abstract

In the last decade, the field of Computer Science has undergone a revolution. It has started the move from a mysterious art form to a detailed science. The vehicle for this progress has been the rising popularity of the field of Software Engineering. This innovative area of computer science has brought about a number of changes in the way we think of, and work with, the development of software. Due to this renovation, a field that started with little or no design techniques and unstructured, unreliable software has progressed to a point where a plethora of techniques exist to improve the quality of a program design as well as that of the resultant software. The popularity of structured design and coding techniques prove that there is widespread belief that the overall product produced using these ideas is somehow better, and statistics seem to indicate that this belief is true. Until recently, however, there existed no technique for quantitatively showing one program better than its functional equivalent. In the past few years, the use of software quality metrics seems to indicate that such a comparison is not only possible, but is also valid. The advent of Software Engineering has demanded that most universities offer a Software Engineering course which entails a "Real-World" group project. Students participating in the class design a system using a program design language (PDL). Other students then write code from the design and finally the design team integrates the modules into a working system. For a complete description of the class see [HENS83] and [TOMJ87].