Software engineering education: Results from a training intervention based on SonarCloud when developing web apps

Past research suggests that Computer Science (CS) undergraduate students are not equipped to manage quality characteristics such as security, reliability, and maintainability. Filling such a gap should allow CS undergraduates an easier integration into the labor market after graduation. To make students more ready for such a market, we introduced a training intervention in our Software Technologies for the Web ( STW ) course in the academic year (a.y.) 2022–23. Our intervention focused on security, i.e., students were trained on secure development and were asked to use SonarCloud . To assess this intervention, we compared the web apps developed in a.y. 2021–22 and a.y. 2022–23 and observed that the security significantly improved in the a.y. 2022–23 web apps. To understand whether and to what extent our training intervention triggered autonomous motivation in the students (a.y. 2022–23) on reliability and maintainability, we also compared the web apps of a.y. 2021–22 and a.y. 2022–23 on these issues. To that end, we did not ask students to deal with reliability and maintainability. This part of our research is presented in this paper for the first time and revealed that the web apps of a.y. 2022–23 are more reliable and maintainable than those of a.y. 2021–22. • SonarCloud helps students acquire skills in reliability and maintainability. • Students resolve more bugs than code smells and perceive the former as more relevant. • Students may experience difficulties configuring and/or using SonarCloud.