IT Specialist Program Initiative for Reality-based Advanced Learning (IT SPIRAL) is a collaboration of nine universities and four industries in the Kansai area in Japan that provides a common foundation for teaching software engineering using the strengths of the universities and industries in collaboration. It is a new approach to teaching software engineering for Japan, using the combined expertise and knowledge of universities and industry in a combination of video lectures provided by the universities, team exercises, and instruction and practice under the direction of industry participants. The goals of the project include developing advanced IT skills among selected students, cooperation among universities in providing software engineering educational materials, and cooperation with industry in providing a practical focus to master's level software engineering education.

IT SPIRAL grew out of two observations. First, industry and the modern world increasingly depend on software intensive systems. Problems with such systems are often more social issues than purely technical difficulties. We have already seen such incidents in banking systems, stock exchanges, traffic control systems and other areas. Second, there is an insufficient supply of skillful software engineers. The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan (MEXT) called for projects under the name of the "Leading IT Specialist Program" to expand practical software engineering education in graduate universities in Japan to help reduce the gap between increasing demands and insufficient numbers and quality [1]. The requirement for collaboration between universities and industry was a fundamental part of the projects. MEXT selected and funded six projects for four years out of 26 proposals from various universities.

Figure 1. The IT Spiral Group

In the Kansai area, MEXT selected IT Spiral, headed by Osaka University, for its unique collaboration with many university software engineering professionals and researchers. This project includes nine universities in Kansai area listed in Table 1 and four industries as shown in Figure 1. Although others were interested, the initial project was limited to that group.