Software engineering and human-computer interaction: Students' perception of a project-based approach in a postgraduate course

This work in progress presents how students perceive the incorporation of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) as content in an advanced Software Engineering (SE) course. This innovation was carried out in a postgraduate course during one semester at a large private university in Chile. The investigation adopted some qualitative, interpretative research using semi-structured interviews. The data was obtained from end-of-term interviews, surveys, and academic records. We focused on academic and professional training, personal evaluation of learning outcomes, utility of the course content and methodology, self-management, desire for learning, self-control, and time spent on core project activities. For this presentation, we concentrated on the analysis of the personal perceptions of utility content and learning. Preliminary results indicate that the incorporation of HCI into the course was highly valued by the students. They all recognized it as a benefit for the software development process. It was also noticed that the activities proposed were good triggers for the self-regulated learning of the expected course content, both SE and HCI. The authors are interested in receiving feedback about the continuity of this work, particularly in the understanding of how the content of HCI interacts with a proposal based on project-based learning (PBL).