Investigation-based Requirements Engineering Education

The norm in teaching requirements engineering to undergraduates is to follow a prescribed set of topics, e.g., that proposed by IEEE/ACM task force on software engineering or that described in a suitable course text. There is no doubt that this teaches students about the established concepts in the field. In this position paper, we argue that there can be much added value to this baseline by involving students in investigative studies on innovative questions, to discover for themselves the outcome of the pursued investigations – something they will not find elsewhere. The added value is in terms of creating new knowledge, gained through an empirical study in which students played a crucial role. However, there are risks in this endeavour that need to be contained; otherwise, despite good intentions, the journey can be painful and the outcome misleading.