Understanding students' preferences of software engineering projects

Students in a maintenance-centric, introductory software engineering course were expected to understand, analyze and extend an open source software project of their choice, selected from a limited set of prepared applications. Students fell into two groups: those who chose a project based on its perceived and estimated difficulty, and those who chose a project based on the appeal of the subject matter. Students in both groups, however, cited value for themselves in terms of enhanced learning experience, and for users in terms of increased benefit, as reasons for their selection. These insights into students' thinking can guide future efforts in selecting projects that can simultaneously support the learning objectives as well as motivate the students, not only in software engineering but also in broader computing courses.