On the Presence of Green and Sustainable Software Engineering in Higher Education Curricula
This addresses the need for integrating sustainability into software engineering education to meet the demands of millennial students and improve environmental impact, but it is incremental as it surveys existing practices without proposing new methods.
The paper investigated the current state of teaching green and sustainable software engineering in higher education through a survey of 33 academics, finding that sustainability is under-represented in curricula and primarily focuses on energy efficiency with a fact-based approach.
Nowadays, software is pervasive in our everyday lives. Its sustainability and environmental impact have become major factors to be considered in the development of software systems. Millennials-the newer generation of university students-are particularly keen to learn about and contribute to a more sustainable and green society. The need for training on green and sustainable topics in software engineering has been reflected in a number of recent studies. The goal of this paper is to get a first understanding of what is the current state of teaching sustainability in the software engineering community, what are the motivations behind the current state of teaching, and what can be done to improve it. To this end, we report the findings from a targeted survey of 33 academics on the presence of green and sustainable software engineering in higher education. The major findings from the collected data suggest that sustainability is under-represented in the curricula, while the current focus of teaching is on energy efficiency delivered through a fact-based approach. The reasons vary from lack of awareness, teaching material and suitable technologies, to the high effort required to teach sustainability. Finally, we provide recommendations for educators willing to teach sustainability in software engineering that can help to suit millennial students needs.