Teaching Software Architecture in Industrial and Academic Contexts: Similarities and Differences

In this chapter, the authors describe their experiences in designing, developing, and teaching a course on Software Architecture that tested both in an academic context with their graduate Computer Science students and in an advanced context of professional updating and training with scores of system engineers in a number of different companies. The course has been taught in several editions in the last five years. The authors describe its rationale, the way in which they teach it differently in academia and in industry, and how they evaluate the students’ learning in the different contexts. Finally, the authors discuss the lessons learnt and describe how this experience is inspiring for the future of this course.