Course Outline - Courses/SWEN501_2026T2 | Te Kura Mātai Pūkaha, Pūrorohiko / School of Engineering and Computer Science | Te Herenga Waka

Dates: 6 Jul 2026 to 8 Nov 2026

Starts: Trimester 2

Points: 15

Estimated workload: Approximately 150 hours or 8.8 hours per week for 17 weeks

Campus: Pipitea

Entry restrictions

Prerequisites: admission to the MSwDev

Corequisites: None

Restrictions: None

Taught by

School of Engineering and Computer Science - Faculty of Science and Engineering

Key dates

Find important dates—including mid-trimester teaching breaks—on the University's key dates calendar.

You'll be told about assessment dates once the course has begun.

Key dates

About this course

This course teaches core computer programming skills, concepts and techniques, including fundamental control structures, object-oriented and procedural problem-solving, and testing and debugging program code. SWEN 501 is a five-week intensive full-time (all day) block at the beginning of the Master of Software Development.

Course learning objectives

Students who pass this course should be able to:

Implement small object-oriented programs using appropriate language features.
Select appropriate collection data types for a program based on their properties and efficiency.
Comprehend, test, and debug programs using a range of software engineering tools.

How this course is taught

This course requires in-person attendance for the large majority of its activities, for which there are no online alternatives. All assessment items will require in-person attendance.

SWEN 501 is a full-time intensive course lasting five weeks at the start of the Master of Software Development, and you should expect to be on-site from 10am each teaching day. If you are unable to attend a teaching day, contact the Lecturer or Course Coordinator as soon as possible.

This course is full-time and intensive, consisting of a sequence of practical programming exercises, interleaved with mini-lectures and tutorials to provide background to the projects, review of the student work, and additional material to complement the project work. The practical exercises, group work, and teaching will be done in the same physical space, allowing for flexible timing of the more formal components of the course.

Assessment

1 x Programming Assignment and demonstrationMark: 25%
1x Paper programming tasks quizMark: 25%
1x In-class Programming AssignmentMark: 25%
1 x Programming Assignment (1 week long)Mark: 25%

Mandatory requirements

Find out what you must do to pass this course.

In addition to achieving an overall pass mark of at least 50% students must:

Obtain at least 40% on at least 3 of the assessment items, to demonstrate basic competence across the majority of topics in the course in order to achieve the CLOs adequately.

If you believe that exceptional circumstances may prevent you from meeting the mandatory course requirements, contact the course coordinator for advice as soon as possible.