Some Experience Required: Comparing Professional Requirements Engineering Experience to Students' Perspectives

Requirements Engineering (RE) is a challenging topic to teach, especially when not all students see the value in learning it. Students have limited experience with RE before graduation, even after taking a required RE class and doing internships. In contrast, alumni from our program often highlight RE as one of the more important classes they take. To address this gap, we investigated current industry practices and compare that with students' perspectives. We conducted surveys with computer science and software engineering alumni (<tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\mathrm{N}=116$</tex>) and upperclassmen (<tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\mathrm{N}=38$</tex>), asking both groups for their thoughts on RE and examples of where it has shown up in their (budding) careers. We also interviewed survey respondents (<tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\mathrm{N}=12$</tex>) to add more detailed examples of RE. We found that while both alumni and students find the class important, many students have negative impressions of RE and do not have opportunities to gain experience outside of our RE course or capstone. Alumni shared what the current state of RE looks like in practice, such as how some only receive requirements secondhand. Also, their examples highlight how intertwined software engineering areas can be, such as the frequent overlap with software design. We discuss these findings and offer recommendations for teaching requirements engineering to undergraduates, such as giving students RE experiences in the classroom since they do have many other opportunities before graduating.