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Bournemouth University students in library, Talbot campus
Bournemouth University
Poole

Software Engineering First year!

Hey , so I am hoping to apply to Bournemouth to study Software Engineering and was just wondering if there is anyone who has studied it before who could explain the course a bit more than the website does , the quality of the lecturers and anything like that.

Cheers
Reply 1
Hi Dean, I will offer a quick summary of the final year as I myself studied Software Engineering at Bournemouth in 2012-2013 after coming in as a direct entry(I previously obtained a HND from Bournemouth some years before). You can easily aim to work in multiple areas of Software with this degree such as testing, business analysis, project management or development.

The course set me up very well for employment straight after graduation with a real focus on the theory behind designing software and how to develop from business requirements using stakeholder analysis and UML diagrams. It is easy to think that half this stuff is not always used in practice but it does crop up and when you are able to be knowledgeable and offer good input with class diagrams or how agile development can work within a team you will find that work becomes a lot easier, you may already have enough to learn with just the code you are working on. Actual coding time tends to be only around 60% of the time with the remainder spent with close interactions with business people and testers.

It also provides some good things to talk about in the first junior developer role interviews before you have any deep coding knowledge. You will most likely do a sandwich year in industry as well which will further enhance your employment opportunities as you will already be productive for an employer.

One of my favourite units revolved around software quality and testing where you will learn TDD(Test Driven Development), unit testing and understanding what bugs really are(were the requirements right, not just a problem with the code?) and how to approach the problem of limiting bugs, manual testing and when to actually stop based upon expected vs found for example.

Other areas of interest were Business Processes and Requirements to understand the real world problem, Software Systems Modelling using UML and relational database diagrams to model the conceptual solution and research into the future of software development(reusable code, AI for example).

The lectures were well structured, all available online and allowed you to get a good handle on what the unit required of you. I would advise going to all lectures, you never know what will appear in end of year exams and you also have the opportunity to question anything with the lecturer at the time.

During your dissertation it really is up to you in how you would like to illustrate your ability and what interests you in regards to research, the course also helps to understand how to actually find the right info in papers and how to reference. I chose to develop a Java web application to help fuel my actual research within the dissertation and was able to go into a job as someone who could develop within a team straight away, of course you could just use good documentation alone and maybe focus in more of the business concepts associated with good software and design.

I now develop for an industry leader in transport logistics using Java for a multi threaded application, the actual direction you take is up to you although the dissertation was what ultimately shaped my career.

This has got me thinking now to get back in contact with a senior lecturer, David Newell, and maybe pop in to provide a talk for anyone interested.

Hope this helps!

Dean C
Bournemouth University students in library, Talbot campus
Bournemouth University
Poole
Reply 2
Original post by Dean C
Hi Dean, I will offer a quick summary of the final year as I myself studied Software Engineering at Bournemouth in 2012-2013 after coming in as a direct entry(I previously obtained a HND from Bournemouth some years before). You can easily aim to work in multiple areas of Software with this degree such as testing, business analysis, project management or development.

The course set me up very well for employment straight after graduation with a real focus on the theory behind designing software and how to develop from business requirements using stakeholder analysis and UML diagrams. It is easy to think that half this stuff is not always used in practice but it does crop up and when you are able to be knowledgeable and offer good input with class diagrams or how agile development can work within a team you will find that work becomes a lot easier, you may already have enough to learn with just the code you are working on. Actual coding time tends to be only around 60% of the time with the remainder spent with close interactions with business people and testers.

It also provides some good things to talk about in the first junior developer role interviews before you have any deep coding knowledge. You will most likely do a sandwich year in industry as well which will further enhance your employment opportunities as you will already be productive for an employer.

One of my favourite units revolved around software quality and testing where you will learn TDD(Test Driven Development), unit testing and understanding what bugs really are(were the requirements right, not just a problem with the code?) and how to approach the problem of limiting bugs, manual testing and when to actually stop based upon expected vs found for example.

Other areas of interest were Business Processes and Requirements to understand the real world problem, Software Systems Modelling using UML and relational database diagrams to model the conceptual solution and research into the future of software development(reusable code, AI for example).

The lectures were well structured, all available online and allowed you to get a good handle on what the unit required of you. I would advise going to all lectures, you never know what will appear in end of year exams and you also have the opportunity to question anything with the lecturer at the time.

During your dissertation it really is up to you in how you would like to illustrate your ability and what interests you in regards to research, the course also helps to understand how to actually find the right info in papers and how to reference. I chose to develop a Java web application to help fuel my actual research within the dissertation and was able to go into a job as someone who could develop within a team straight away, of course you could just use good documentation alone and maybe focus in more of the business concepts associated with good software and design.

I now develop for an industry leader in transport logistics using Java for a multi threaded application, the actual direction you take is up to you although the dissertation was what ultimately shaped my career.

This has got me thinking now to get back in contact with a senior lecturer, David Newell, and maybe pop in to provide a talk for anyone interested.

Hope this helps!

Dean C


Thanks for the reply! Was very helpful and I appreciate the effort.
I have applied to Bournemouth so hopefully will get an offer soon.

May I ask how fast-paced the first year was in terms of programming? I already have a basic understanding of Java programming so would be nice to know if/how I will be challenged.

Cheers
Reply 3
Original post by Dean.Salt
Thanks for the reply! Was very helpful and I appreciate the effort.
I have applied to Bournemouth so hopefully will get an offer soon.

May I ask how fast-paced the first year was in terms of programming? I already have a basic understanding of Java programming so would be nice to know if/how I will be challenged.

Cheers


No worries, hope the offer comes in for you!

I originally completed an HND which had a different title, Internet Communication Systems which required simple use of variables and mapping from a data base to pull out a details of a person for example. There were however people I got to know in the Software Engineering degree that had originally arrived though clearing, joined the first year, with very little knowledge of programming after studying A level physics and maths for example.

After reading the current course spec for year one it looks like a way introduce students to understanding OO(Object Orientation) possibly, the assignment of variables(think primitives and Objects) and what is Syntax/Semantics. If you are able to go in and can write a class that has a main method, takes some command line arguments and do something different based upon those arguments you will have a nice early advantage. You will most likely use Eclipse IDE so do not need to spend too much time understanding the Java compiler, so right now if you can compile just using the command line leave it there and stick to an IDE, there are many things to learn first such as list types(unique values, one in one out, how they scale and search) or what you can do with a String out of the box, all assuming they still use Java to teach.

Year 2 is where it hots up as I can see concurrency listed, that is where things get really interesting!

If you want to get further with Java and what it can really do with some of the free frameworks I would recommend a youtube channel - koushks javaBrains, this was invaluable to me.

An industry standard external library which I would advise learning about is Spring which enables Dependency Injection. This is worth learning if you want to start looking outside of Java SE(Standard Edition) but before doing so look to get a good way though something like Head First Java, a great book, and understand what things like XML structures and design patterns are(look up facade for a good example).

Any other questions feel free to ask!
Reply 4
Original post by Dean C
No worries, hope the offer comes in for you!

I originally completed an HND which had a different title, Internet Communication Systems which required simple use of variables and mapping from a data base to pull out a details of a person for example. There were however people I got to know in the Software Engineering degree that had originally arrived though clearing, joined the first year, with very little knowledge of programming after studying A level physics and maths for example.

After reading the current course spec for year one it looks like a way introduce students to understanding OO(Object Orientation) possibly, the assignment of variables(think primitives and Objects) and what is Syntax/Semantics. If you are able to go in and can write a class that has a main method, takes some command line arguments and do something different based upon those arguments you will have a nice early advantage. You will most likely use Eclipse IDE so do not need to spend too much time understanding the Java compiler, so right now if you can compile just using the command line leave it there and stick to an IDE, there are many things to learn first such as list types(unique values, one in one out, how they scale and search) or what you can do with a String out of the box, all assuming they still use Java to teach.

Year 2 is where it hots up as I can see concurrency listed, that is where things get really interesting!

If you want to get further with Java and what it can really do with some of the free frameworks I would recommend a youtube channel - koushks javaBrains, this was invaluable to me.

An industry standard external library which I would advise learning about is Spring which enables Dependency Injection. This is worth learning if you want to start looking outside of Java SE(Standard Edition) but before doing so look to get a good way though something like Head First Java, a great book, and understand what things like XML structures and design patterns are(look up facade for a good example).

Any other questions feel free to ask!


Ah okay that sounds good , im pretty familiar with Eclipse but not so much using command line stuff so will have a look at that. I will also check out those resources , appreciate the assistance!

I will let you know if i have any more questions.

Cheers

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