Abstract: 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.
Keywords: Software development process, problem/project based learning, software engineering process, collaborative workspace, semantic web
