A PBL approach to process management applied to Software Engineering education

Given the demand in the area of Software Engineering for solutions that actually contribute to modern organizations, the search for qualified professionals who have considerable practical experience has been growing day-by-day. Set against this background is the learning process of traditional teaching, in which the Student is largely a mere recipient of information, including concepts and theoretical foundations, and is seldom given practice in problem solving. Therefore with a view to minimizing this problem, teaching and learning methods such as the Problem Based Learning (PBL) have emerged in higher education as an approach to foster changes in teaching and learning processes, which are aligned to the new requirements of the labor market and redefine the roles of those involved in educational processes. To evaluate these processes, a case study on skills training to teach Usability Testing is discussed, and important results presented that show the applicability of the proposed approach for teaching Software Engineering.