TIETA8 Software Engineering 5 ECTS
News
- TIE-21107 Software Engineering Methodologies starts next time in Period III during academic year 2019-2020.
- TIETA8 can be studied until 31.7.2019, after that it is not anymore possible to take this book exam course. TIE-21107 Software Engineering Methodologies will compensate TIETA8.
- Deadlines to study TIETA8 during summer:
- Prepare for a short delay, about 3 to 7 days especially in July, when teacher approves summaries.
- Deadline to return summaries is July 24th. Summaries returned by this day will be approved in two days.
- Last day to take exam is 31.7.2019.
General Information
See the course description in the study guide.
The Software Engineering course is organized as a self-study course that can be studied throughout the year. The course consists of two stages:
- Study the course books and write summaries (kind of “reading notes”) about them. The summaries are returned to the course supervisor by email.
- Take the course exam. It is organized as an electronic exam that can be taken throughout the year (according to the opening hours of the University of Tampere Electronic Exam Service).
- The exam may not be taken before the supervisor has approved the summaries.
There is no enrollment in this course. Just start reading the books and finish stage 1.
The course is currently supervised by Timo Poranen (timo.poranen at tuni.fi).
Course Material and Instructions
The course books are:
Sommerville’s (8th edition) is available at the university library both in print and as an e-book. Note that the e-book can be accessed from the internet, e.g., directly from your home computer.
- The whole book Coplien and Bjørnvig: Lean Architecture for Agile Software Development.
The book is available at the university library as an e-book.
- About reading this book:
- The book (mainly Chapter 9) contains some example code in e.g. C++ and Ruby programming languages. You may browse through the code examples casually, that is, you are not expected to know these languages in detail.
- The book assumes that the reader is at least superficially familiar with an agile method called “Scrum”. For example the following webpages provide a short introduction to Scrum:
- Scrumalliance.org: Learn about Scrum?
- Wikipedia: Scrum (Software development).
About writing the summaries:
- Write two summaries: one for each book.
- You may write the summaries in English or Finnish.
- Whenever you finish reading a book chapter (or a couple, if they are short), write a concise summary of what you read/learned. E.g. what were the main points of the chapter(s)? If some parts were not clear, you may also add further information/explanations etc. by using some additional resources such as other books or the internet.
- Place each chapter summary to its own chapter (that is, your summaries should be divided into chapters in a similar way as the book itself)
- Try to write the summaries in such manner that you may use them as study review material when preparing for the exam.
- The summaries should contain enough detail to help you remember the most important topics/concepts.
- On the other hand, avoid too excessive length/detail. The idea is not to copy the books as such.
- Avoid excessive “verbatim quotes” from the books: try to formulate the main points / ideas in your own words. This helps you learn/remember the contents better than just blind/monotone copying.
- Direct copy-pasting is not allowed!
- The summaries are official parts of the course requirements. As such they are subject to the usual regulations concerning plagiarism. Therefore do not copy from others or from the internet!
- The summaries will be stored and may be tested by plagiarism detection tools (and this can happen months or even years later).
- Note that plagiarism leads into consequences even if it is noticed after some delay. Therefore it really is not worth taking the risk.
- Once the summaries are ready, send them by email to the course supervisor (timo.t.poranen at uta.fi).
- Note: depending of the time, there may be some delay in checking the summaries (e.g. during summer vacation etc.).
How to take part in the exam:
- Once you have sent your summaries to the supervisor and received a note of approval, you may take the exam at any available time.
- Go to the webpages of the Electronic Exam Service and (1) read the practical instructions regarding electronic exams and (2) reserve a suitable examination date and room.
- Take the exam at the time and room you reserved. You may not take any extra material (books etc.) to the electronic examination room.
About exam results and retaking the exam:
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- The exam is available continuously throughout the year (according to the opening hours of the university facilities), but you may take the exam at most once within a single Teaching Period or during summer recess.
- Example 1: If you take the exam in Teaching Period II, you may not retake the exam before Teaching Period III.
- Example 2: If you take the exam during Teaching Period IV, you may retake the exam during summer.
- Exams are evaluated (latest) in the beginning of the next teaching period. If you need credits earlier, please contact teacher.
- The exam is available continuously throughout the year (according to the opening hours of the university facilities), but you may take the exam at most once within a single Teaching Period or during summer recess.
Further notes about the exam:
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- The exam questions are available in English only, but you may answer them in English or in Finnish.
- The exam is marked as pass or fail. There will be 10 questions. You have to answer 8 questions.
- In order to pass the exam, you need to give at least a partially correct answer to at least 7 of the answered 8 questions. In addition at least 5 of your answers should be fairly good.
- What this means is that the exam is failed if either:
- More than one of your 8 answers is deemed to be more or less completely wrong (“nonsense”), or
- At least half (= 4) of your answers are of only barely acceptable quality.
- What this means is that the exam is failed if either:
-