This lightning talk focuses on the efforts of software engineering (SE) academics to keep curriculum relevant. SE evolves rapidly, with changing technology and industry expectations. The curriculum review bodies (e.g. ACM and IEEE-CS working groups) provide a foundation for curriculum, but can have refresh cycles measured in years. We aim to identify, and potentially increase, the confidence level of SE educators with respect to the relevance of their curriculum. It is also of interest to identify the sources academia uses to keep their courses current. and the role of gray literature (GL). Other fields have found GL useful in bridging academic research and industry needs. GL can be extended to SE to aid faculty preparing students for industry.

We address two questions: first, given the velocity of technical change, do SE educators feel their courses effectively prepare students for their careers, specifically with regard to recent developments? Do current curricular guidelines accurately reflect industry practice and needs for our graduates? Second, how do we track current and emerging trends to capture relevant competencies? A study of scholarly literature will have a limited impact on our understanding of current and emerging trends. Instructors would do well to utilize other sources to supplement in topic identification and mastery level. The role of GL in this process is of particular interest. It is hoped this discussion can help guide a study which would investigate the development of a best practice model for maintaining relevant SE curriculum.