It could be suggested that there is a greater opportunity to engage computing students with course material than in other subjects due to the general immersion of society in modern technologies. The context of each technology can be exploited and module material can be positioned around it: From the student perspective it is perhaps more interesting to consider how a robot waiting on a customer in a restaurant requires concurrent programming techniques in the operating system than to consider the simultaneous threads running in a desktop PC. Exploiting the use of modern technologies to support teaching and learning however requires a creative pedagogy to harness those aspects of interest. Efforts have been made to achieve this on a Master of Science degree in Professional Software Development at Ulster University. The design of the coursework specifications along with the student engagement with each task forms the basis of this presentation.
