0 7 4 0 -7 4 5 9 / 0 6 / $ 2 0 . 0 0 © 2 0 0 6 I E E E M a y / J u n e 2 0 0 6 I E E E S O F T W A R E 5 5 feature undergraduate SE degree programs. We can view SE 2004 as SWEBOK's education counterpart. Both SE 2004 and SWEBOK are important milestones resulting from participants' extensive real-world experience and working-group discussions. Both heavily emphasize the "engineering" in software engineering. 1-3 This focus influences the contents of a typical SE course as well as the students'

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... derstanding of what SE entails. However, SE has an important social dimension that's easily squeezed out by the omnipresent engineering attitude. Here, I discuss how this limited conception of SE contributes to five assumptions that can trap SE educators: ■ An SE course needs an industrial project. ■ SE is like other branches of engineering. ■ Planning in SE is poorly done relative to other fields. ■ The user interface is part of low-level design. ■ SWEBOK represents the state of the practice. The traps idea isn't highly original. Several authors have published similar articles on the myths of formal methods, requirements engineering, and SE programs. 4 In the latter case, the authors discuss whether the new SE degree programs are a silver bullet. The traps I discuss focus on a typical SE course's content and how it represents SE to beginning students. My aim is both to provoke discussion and to highlight the challenges these traps present to SE educators. Context My teaching situation partly determines and bounds the traps I discuss. Typically, Dutch universities don't offer separate computer science (CS) and SE degrees. They have a three-year bachelor's program and a two-year master's Reflections on Software Engineering Education