Abstract:
Computer Technology students, who read software engineering, have often complained of graduating without acquiring the skills required of them to function as professional software engineers. This results in students who graduate from a four-year programme in Computer Technology enrolling in private software training firms to take many more months of training in order to make up for their inadequacies. Based on this premise, the study was conducted to explore ways of improving the acquisition of Software Engineering skills by University students of Computer Technology in the South-East Geo-political Zone of Nigeria. A survey research design was adopted for the study. A total of 104 teachers of software engineering courses in all the 13 Universities in the South-East Geo-political zone of Nigeria were involved in the study. A structured questionnaire was used for data collection. Three experts in computer science carried out face validation of the instrument. Five research questions and five research hypotheses tested at 0.05 level of significance guided the study. Means and standard deviation were employed to answer the research questions, while t-test statistics was used to test the hypotheses. It was found that improvement on the skills in the individual activities involved in software engineering improves the acquisition of software engineering. Also it was found that involvement of experts in each of the software engineering phases is an important improvement strategy in the acquisition of software engineering skills. Again, the findings reveal that improvement on the technique utilized in relating with the software users is an improvement strategy in the acquisition of software engineering skills. It was recommended that the National Universities Commission should review the curriculum of Software Engineering to include the stipulated number of practical lesson, theoretical lesson, equipment required and activities to be done. It was also recommended that the employers of software engineers should have an upward review of the remunerations of software Engineers.
