FLOSS in Software Engineering Education An Update of a Systematic Mapping Study

Context: Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects have been used in Software Engineering Education (SEE) to address the need for more realistic settings that reduce the gap between software engineering (SE) courses and industry needs. A systematic mapping study (SMS) performed in 2013 structured the research area on the use of FLOSS projects in SEE. Objective: Update the 2013 SMS with studies published in the last five years, classifying and summarizing them to discuss trends and identify research gaps in the context of the use of FLOSS projects in SEE. Method: We retrieved and analyzed a set of 4132 papers published from 2013 to 2017, from which 33 papers were selected and classified. We analyzed the new results and compared them with those from the previous SMS to confirm or discover trends. Results: The updated mapping summarizes the studies published in the last five years, most of them in conferences. Our analysis confirmed trends previously observed for three facets (SE area, curriculum choice and assessment type) and discovered new trends for other facets. Conclusion: Studies report the use of FLOSS projects in regular, comprehensive SE courses. The prevalence of experience reports over solution proposals in the last five years may indicate that researchers are more concerned with the use and evaluation of existing proposals, although there are still opportunities for more empirical work based on sound educational research methods.