yPBL: An Active, Collaborative and Project-Based Learning Methodology in the Domain of Software Engineering

Software engineers face the challenge of working in a very dynamic and rapidly evolving context requiring the continuous acquisition of knowledge with new software technologies, paradigms, approaches and methodologies. To address these needs, this paper proposes an active, collaborative and project-based learning methodology that is well suited to the software engineering (SE) domain. The yPBL methodology is defined as a specialization of a SE process named 2TUP or "y" that is mainly characterized by the separation of concerns between the requirements and constraints of a software product and the technologies used during its design and development. This SE process has been specialized to define project-based learning courses and the required activities allowing the research, discovery, acquisition, transmission and application of knowledge by the learners following actively and collaboratively the software product engineering process. The yPBL methodology can be applied to standard classroom courses as well as to geographically distributed courses involving students and instructors as well as professionals that need to update or acquire new SE knowledge. In this paper the yPBL methodology is formally specified using the Unified Modelling Language (UML). This methodology is illustrated and evaluated by a case study involving students and instructors of a classroom based software engineering and service-oriented computing course at the INSA Engineering School in Toulouse, France.