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An Experience of Software Process Improvement Applied to Education: The Personal Work Planning Technique D. Antonio de Amescua Seco IDEA GROUP PUBLISHING An Experience of Software Process Improvement Applied to Education 1 IDEA GROUP PUBLISHING 1331 E. Chocolate Avenue, Hershey PA 17033-1117, USA Tel: 717/533-8845; Fax 717/533-8661; URL-http://www.idea-group.com 16#$ $ g n i h s i l b u P p u o r G a e An Experience of Software Process d I t h g i r Copy Improvement Applied to Education: The Personal Work Planning hing s Technique Publi up o r G a e d I t h g i r y EXECUTIVE Cop SUMMARY g n i h s i l b u P p u o r G BACKGROUND a e d I t h g i r y Cop g n i h lis b u P p u o r G a e d I t h g i r y p Co D. Antonio de Amescua Seco, Javier García Guzmán, María Isabel Sánchez Segura, Paloma Martínez Fernández and Juan Llorens Morillo Carlos III University of Madrid, Spain This case describes the use of the Personal Work Planning (PWP) technique as a time management tool for student practicals on the Software Engineering II course at Carlos III University. It analyzes the results obtained and presents the methodology used to implement activities associated with the Personal Work Planning technique in an academic institution. In addition, an empirical study was carried out to determine the level of student satisfaction after using this technique. This case study concludes that many students realized the usefulness of PWP for their assignments. This technique is of invaluable help to lecturers who wish to improve the course curriculum and the practicals. Carlos III University of Madrid, founded in 1989, is a public university with an enrollment of 13,342 students and a staff of 1,231 (910 lecturers and 321 administrative staff). It offers a total of 32 degree courses and has three faculties: Social Sciences and Law; Humanities, Documentation and Communication; and the Engineering School. The Engineering School offers studies in Industrial Engineering, Computer Sciences and Telecommunications among others. The university teaching staff is divided into 16 departments, which organize research and lectures in their respective areas. Carlos III University opened with modern, flexible and multidisciplinary curricula and, from the beginning, made measuring and controlling its basic processes an integral part of their policy. Every year, a University Quality Committee implements Improvement Programs and carries out a Teaching Quality Evaluation Program for all degree courses. Every semester, students complete questionnaires to evaluate both courses and lecturers for the Computer Science degree. The evaluation for the Computer Science degree has been positive. At present, the questionnaires consist of 13 questions: one assesses their interest in the subject matter, eight assess the lecturer, and the remaining four assess the practicals and time dedicated to the course. Copyright © Idea Group Publishing. Copying without written permission of Idea Group Publishing is prohibited. 2 Seco, Guzmán, Segura, Fernández & Morillo This experiment was based on an evaluation of the Computer Science course. The aim was to determine the effort students dedicated to developing their practicals. With the real data, it will be possible to design better courses where there is a correlation between the total number of hours and the time dedicated to practicals, thus a more realistic approach to achieving the objectives. SETTING THE STAGE g n i h s i l b u P p u o r G The main objective of Software Process Improvement (SPI) is to increase the quality of products and services, which a software company provides, by improving the quality of their production processes. One of the first research centers of software process improvement was the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) a