The SEI curriculum modules and their influence: Norm Gibbs' legacy to software engineering education

The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University started its first contract with a carte blanche opportunity and generous funding to improve the state of software engineering education. Norm Gibbs, the first Director of Education at the SEI guided efforts in this area. One of his innovations, discussed here, were the “curriculum modules” encapsulating software engineering knowledge. We describe the scope and form of the curriculum modules, together with our personal experiences of developing the prototype modules. We conclude with an informal assessment of how well the original set of SEI curriculum modules match current ideas, both about software engineering education and also about the activities and practices that make up software engineering as a discipline.