Requirements Engineering Course Material for First-Year Software Engineering Students

Requirements engineering (RE) studies concepts, tools, and methods which allow consideration and analysis of a problem. In software engineering, requirements engineering often starts at the beginning of a software project and provides structure to understand who is involved, what the software needs to do, and how well it must perform its functions. This early consideration of the problem is both important and difficult, as it often touches on the bridge between the complex and human world of the problem and the (also complex) world of the system.Often, students find RE courses challenging: there is usually not a single correct answer,i.e., there are many correct ways to write requirements or draw models; and, for those who are accustomed to technical activities like coding and design, a focus on human actions and communication can be surprising. Past work in the Requirements Engineering Education and Training Workshop (REET) have explored some of these issues. These challenges can manifest differently for students depending on their level of education and work experience. Those who lack experience with complex software often do not see the need for RE activities, while those who have detailed technical experience, often find it hard to abstract away from the details.In this work, I describe artifacts aimed to teach RE to first-year software engineering students.I provide my lecture slides, assignments, some assignment cases, and exercises with a description of the context, the artifacts, and a discussion of challenges and possible modifications. My hope is that these artifacts will help others to design and apply effective education in RE topics.