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The Tenth International Arab Conference on Quality Assurance in Higher Education ﻲﻟﺎﻌﻟا ﻢﯿﻠﻌﺘﻟا ةدﻮﺟ نﺎﻤﻀﻟ ﺮﺷﺎﻌﻟا ﻲﻟوﺪﻟا ﻲﺑﺮﻌﻟا ﺮﻤﺗﺆﻤﻟا

Teaching Agile Software Development in a Software
Engineering Course: An Empirical Study

Alaa Hantoli and Abdel Salam Sayyad
1
2
1 Engineering and Technology Faculty,
Palestine Technical University-Kadoorie, Palestine
a.hantoli@ptuk.edu.ps
2 Master Program in Software Engineering,
Birzeit University, Palestine
asayyad@birzeit.edu

Abstract: Agile has been successfully adopted by many software companies and it is the most popular methodology
for software development in industry nowadays. However, our universities give more attention to teaching Waterfall
model in related courses with a bit coverage of Agile main characteristics. In this paper, we work on the setup,
execution, and results of teaching a Software Engineering course to undergraduate students with a specific focus on
Agile practices, through official re-constructed lectures besides open workshops with a senior engineer from industry
to follow up with students projects in parallel. This research will study its impact on students. Also, overcome the
potential problems and highlight any raised side effects. In addition to improve the students’ technical and social
skills, and in spite of other related works, it investigates many factors affected or have been affected by Agile and
hold many significant comparisons. The results show the high satisfaction of the students through the experiment,
also show a sufficient evidence to conclude that there is a significant difference in the means of improvements
between the experimental and control groups in understanding software engineering and Agile methodology in
specific.

Keywords: Agile Software Development, Scrum, Software Engineering.

Introduction:
The term Agile Software Development (ASD) has evolved opposite of the plan-centric development, its agility
come from being designed to accelerate the software delivery, and to be responsive and to the rapidly changing
requirements and integrate them to the product, and increase the productivity as well as ensure the software high
quality and minimal development overhead [1].

1.1 Introduction and Motivation:

Agile becomes main stream and it is the public approach in software development nowadays [6]. It was evolved
and applied by industry [5].
It becomes critical to teach the process of development in universities, which is a risk-free academic environment
allow a fully experiencing of Agile, in order to improve the students’ technical and social skills effectively, and build
an Agile mindset. Also, helps to investigate whatever factors we intend to study in this convenient educational
environment [2].

1.2 Research Objectives and Problem Statement:
- This research will discuss whether we can significantly improve the quality of teaching output by applying the
proposed pedagogical model?
- How can course materials be designed to help students stay organized and succeeded? And how to manage such
class effectively?
- Also hold a comparison between Waterfall Model and Agile Model against specific criteria.
- Are students satisfied of learning the SWE course with a focus on agile and its tools?

1.3 Overview of this paper:
The paper is organized after the introduction section as follows:
Section 2 gives a background about ASD and Scrum. Besides the pertinent literature.
Section 3 outlines the research methodology to collect and analyze the data.
Section 4 shows results and discussion, followed by a conclusion, recommendation and threats to validity.

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