Identifying Non-Technical Skill Gaps in Software Engineering Education: What Experts Expect But Students Don’t Learn

As the importance of non-technical skills in the software engineering industry increases, the skill sets of graduates match less and less with industry expectations. A growing body of research exists that attempts to identify this skill gap. However, only few so far explicitly compare opinions of the industry with what is currently being taught in academia. By aggregating data from three previous works, we identify the three biggest non-technical skill gaps between industry and academia for the field of software engineering: devoting oneself to continuous learning , being creative by approaching a problem from different angles , and thinking in a solution-oriented way by favoring outcome over ego . Eight follow-up interviews were conducted to further explore how the industry perceives these skill gaps, yielding 26 sub-themes grouped into six bigger themes: stimulating continuous learning , stimulating creativity , creative techniques , addressing the gap in education , skill requirements in industry , and the industry selection process . With this work, we hope to inspire educators to give the necessary attention to the uncovered skills, further mitigating the gap between the industry and the academic world.

Lessons Learned About Gamification in Software Engineering Education

Software engineering courses traditionally mix theoretical aspects with practical ones that are later used in the development of projects. Teaching software engineering courses is not easy because in many cases the students lack motivation to exercise the topics prior to project development. This chapter presents the application of gamification on some topics of a software engineering course to engage students and increase their motivation. The authors argue that with the proper motivation, the students can better exercise the topics and obtain stronger knowledge. The authors have created five games to help in the learning process of the software engineering course. The games are related to risk management, BPMN modeling, Scrum process, design and inspection of class diagrams, and COSMIC functional size measurement. Gamification has been applied during four years in the software engineering course, resulting in an improved learning experience for the students. Finally, lessons learned are presented and discussed.

Scrum VR: Virtual Reality Serious Video Game to Learn Scrum

Education is crucial for the growth of society, and the usage of effective learning methods is key to transmit knowledge to young students. Some initiatives present Virtual Reality technologies as a promising medium to provide active, effective, and innovative teaching. In turn, the use of this technology seems to be very attractive to students, making it possible to acquire knowledge through it. On the other hand, agile methodologies have taken an essential role within information technologies and they are key in Software Engineering education. This paper combines both areas and presents prior research about Virtual Reality experiences with educational purposes and introduces a serious VR video game that aims to promote the learning of agile methodologies in Software Engineering education, specifically the Scrum methodology. This application tries to bring students closer to their first days of work within a software development team that uses the Scrum methodology. Two evaluation processes performed with university teachers and students indicate that the developed video game meets the proposed objectives and looks promising.