A Teaching Reform Practice for Enhancing Creative and Analytical Thinking in Software Engineering Courses

This study reports a teaching reform practice implemented in a Year 3 Software Engineering course, aiming to support students' creative and analytical thinking during software design tasks. In software engineering education, students often demonstrate strong coding abilities but experience difficulties in generating diverse design ideas and systematically refining them into feasible solutions. To address this challenge, a structured teaching model integrating divergent and convergent thinking was introduced into project-based learning activities. The proposed model consists of three stages: Imagining, Linking, and Inference. The Imagining stage encourages divergent thinking through open-ended design activities; the Linking stage supports guided reflection and learning motivation; and the Inference stage focuses on convergent thinking through feasibility analysis and design justification. The model was applied across several teaching weeks in a Year 3 Software Engineering course. Classroom observations and teaching reflections indicate that the approach helped students develop clearer thinking structures, improved their ability to justify design decisions, and enhanced engagement in design discussions. This study demonstrates the value of structured thinking training in software engineering education and provides a transferable teaching model for similar practice-oriented courses.