See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/224238641

Teaching “soft” skills in Software Engineering

Conference Paper · May 2011

DOI: 10.1109/EDUCON.2011.5773204 · Source: IEEE Xplore

CITATIONS READS

12 1,244

3 authors, including:

Luz Marina Moreno José-Luis Roda-García

Universidad de La Laguna Universidad de La Laguna
21 PUBLICATIONS   221 CITATIONS    59 PUBLICATIONS   208 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Share PSI 2.0 View project

Analysis of emergency incidents using Data Science techniques View project

All content following this page was uploaded by José-Luis Roda-García on 28 May 2014.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 Teaching “Soft” Skills in Software Engineering
Daniel González-Morales, Luz Marina Moreno de Antonio, José Luis Roda García
Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería Informática - ETSII
Universidad de La Laguna, ULL
La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
dgonmor@ull.es, lmmoreno@ull.es, jlroda@ull.es

Abstract— Soft skills are not sufficiently attended in early
academic courses in the software engineering high level studies.
Computer engineering students entering the fourth and fifth year
of their studies possess a comprehensive amount of theoretical
and applied coursework. Nevertheless, a gap in their study
program exists, and it is found in hands-on experience in
professional development. The instructors at the ULL offer
innovative Software Engineering coursework which remedies this
situation. This approach offers students practical experience in
supervision, project management, quality control and decision-
making. Student teams made up of 4 or 5 members are formed
at the beginning of the academic year and they are responsible
for developing a real project for a real client. The product will be
delivered upon project completion. The project evaluation is
based on formal technical reviews of prototypes produced during
the project life cycle. A key factor in the success of the program is
in the increased motivation exhibited by the students. Although
in past years students in this degree program acted as simply
receptors of information, this educational alternative confirms
that students are now achieving higher performance and are
better prepared to enter the engineering profession.
Keywords- technical knowledge; soft skills; software
engineering; student motivation
I. INTRODUCTION
In June 1999, European Union Ministers of Education
presented the Bologna Declaration [1]. Six main objectives
were defined: 1) a system of academic degrees that are easy to
recognize and compare, 2) a system based essentially on two
cycles, 3) a system of accumulation and transfer of credits, 4)
mobility of students, teachers and researchers, 5)
cooperation with regard to quality assurance and 6) the
European dimension in higher education. In the Leuven
Communiqué of 2009 [2], the Ministers added new objectives
to be covered in the higher education: social dimension,
student employability, lifelong learning and a global context.
In December 2010 will finally be establish the three degree
cycles for European universities as is considered in the
proposal presented in [1] and [2].
In the Software Engineering scope, the most representative
body of knowledge is given by IEEE [3], ACM [4] and
SWEBOK [5]. In [3] and [4] new principles and
recommendations were presented making special emphasis to
a critical need to combine the computer science foundational
learning components (often called “hard skills”) with
engineering, organizational, social, collaborative, teamwork,
communication and project based skills (the “soft” skills).
Different studies had presented distinct classifications for
soft skills [6, 7, 8, 9 and 10]. In this references, we can find
the following soft skills: teamwork; leadership; responsability;
self directed learning; ethical and professional moral; project
management; planning; negotiation; oral comunication;
interpersonal skills with colleagues and clients; written
communication; creativity; ability to apply knowledge in the
workspace; capacity to learn new skills; critical thinking and
problem solving; lifelong learning and information
management; entrepreneurship.
With the new degrees, there has been a growing interest
in higher education to include the development of soft skills.
There are different ways to implement soft skills at institutes
of higher learning [6]. We can remark:
 Development of soft skills through stand-alone subject.
 Development of soft skills by embedding it in existing
courses.
 Development of soft skills based on support programs.
 Development of soft skills based on formal and informal
activities at faculty o university levels.
University of La Laguna has considered that personal
and social skills are critical for the future professional
practice. For this reason, all new degrees are designed with a
certain amount of soft skills credits. The new Bachelor degree
in Computer Engineering includes subjects focused
exclusively on the development of soft skills (i.e. “Emotional
Intelligence” or “Second Language - English”). There are
other courses that allow students to acquire these skills
combined with other activities (i.e. “IT Project Management”
or “Ethics”) [11]. Other general activities oriented to all the
students, are planned from the University level (how to write a
CV, entrepreneurship skills, etc.).
This work presents the experiences of five years where
we have carried out activities in subjects for the development
of soft skills in the field of Software Engineering. This paper
explains the best practices that have allowed us to introduce
soft skills in the new degree courses tailored to Bologna. We
have used a Project Based Learning to help student to acquire
the necessary skills. Local companies have collaborated with
us over these years, to decide the skills to work with the
students in this kind of subjects. The companies have
remarked us, via reviews and surveys, the necessary skills that
all engineers should acquire. We decided to focus our work on
a set of 10 soft skills:

978-1-61284-641-5/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE April 4 - 6, 2010, Amman, Jordan

2011 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON) – "Learning Environments and Ecosystems in Engineering Education"
Page 630
  Search and classification of information
 Report writing
 Teamwork
 Client management and client expectations
 Leadership and supervision
 Decision making
 Conflict management
 Critical thinking
 Evaluation of results
 Communication of results
The experience was carried out in two different subjects
offered in the last course of Computer Engineering degree:
Management of Information Systems (hereinafter MIS) and
Software Engineering Laboratory (hereinafter SELab).
In section two, the subjects used in the experience are
presented. Theoretical and practical laboratories are explained.
Section III describes the soft skills we have used in the
development of the project. The different activities carried out
by the students are given in section IV. Each activity performed
tasks that permit students acquire the soft skills proposed. The
results are exposed in the V section.
II. MOTIVATION
Students involved in this experience have already received
four courses with many subjects related with the computer
science career. They have received theoretical concepts and
practical lessons about technical aspects of their future
profession (programming, data structures, information
concepts, computer architecture, operating systems, database
management, software engineering fundamentals,
communications, fundamental physics and mathematics,
etc….). Almost all of the laboratory and coursework
assignments have been carried out on an individual basis, with
limited group work. In the latter case, the groups are quite
small in number, usually among classmates with prior
relationship (friends), and most importantly, these groups
rarely encounter the types of problems found in other
teamwork settings. The classroom projects that students have
worked on so far, have all been on a small scale, easily
handled and controlled by the academics. The projects in most
of the subjects are proposed by the instructors. There has been
no direct customer contact. Students have not had an
opportunity to develop important project management skills.
Therefore, many exercises are developed where students do
not face the problems (nor find solutions) typically
encountered in project management and development. Here is
where we begin our experience by taking into consideration
not only the technical aspects of the problems but also soft
skills that students must acquire.
The two subjects involved in this study belong to the
Computer Engineering career at the University of La Laguna
in Tenerife, Spain. The average number of students each
course is 40. Both subjects are taught in the last course and
have six credits. Three credits are classroom lectures, and the
three others, are given in practical lessons in the
laboratory. Students receive weekly two hours of theory on the
978-1-61284-641-5/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE
2011 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON) – "Learning Environments and Ecosystems in Engineering Education"
Page 631
contents of each subject. The other two hours are conducted in
the laboratory and are grouped together so that students can
develop a project in all its life cycle phases.
The subject Management of Information Systems (MIS) is
taught in the first semester and Software Engineering
Laboratory (SELab) in the second semester. Both courses give
students learning soft and hard skills through a well-defined
set of activities with defined targets and evidences.
MIS focuses on project management. The course uses the
good practice techniques identified by the Project
Management Body of Knowledge, PMBOK@ [12], and
adapts them toward the management of information and
communication technologies projects. Table 1 presents the
theoretical concepts the student learns. This subject combines
hard and soft skills related with project management that
student learns in MIS are the following:
 Project integration management
 Project scope management
 Project time management
 Project cost management
 Project quality management
 Project human resources management
 Project communications management
 Project risk management
 Project procurement management
The principal activity in the MIS course involves students
to use a real case study to properly identifying the problem
that needs to be developed and then they propose the solutions
using PMBOK. Although it is recognized that areas such as
human resources management, risk management,
communications management and procurement management
are not considered essential in this engineering degree, they
are considered in great detail because of their importance in
projects related to information and communication
technology.
The SELab course focuses its theoretical contents of the
syllabus on the evolution of information systems, in advanced
software development methodologies, in software architecture,
model driven development and software product lines. The
theoretical concepts the student learns in SELab are the
following:
 Evolution of the systems software
 Advanced software development methodologies
 Software architecture
 Introduction to MDA and SPL
Laboratory coursework concentrates on developing a real
project for an actual local business company. The project
considered is the same as for the MIS subject, but it is centred
in the development of the project and having a working
prototype of the information system.
Five years ago, upon completion of MIS and SELab,
students would have acquired the desired theoretical and
practical knowledge for professional development in software
engineering. The relationship of both subjects was implicit
since most of the material learned in MIS was applied in
April 4 - 6, 2010, Amman, Jordan
SELab. The two subjects developed their activities without the the teams are located in the laboratories of the faculty and they
necessary coordination and this advantage resulted in the can use meeting rooms, presentation area, library, etc.
development of a Project Management Plan (PMP) in MIS for
an imaginary case, while its SELab course counterpart centred III. WHAT SOFT SKILLS ARE BEING CONSIDERED ?
on carrying out the development of a system with a real client.
All projects selected for the courses allow students to work
Time restrictions, however, contributed to a limited amount of
hard skills and soft skills, although projects are of different
successfully finished projects.
companies and/or different topics.
The academics therefore considered a new approach to
This section explains the list of soft skills and most
integrate and coordinate these courses. Students in MIS would
important attitudes that the student should be acquire and
prepare a PMP for a real project with a real client that will
apply in these projects. The list of soft skills was enumerated
have to be executed during SELab. This new educational
in the introduction of this paper, but now we describe each one
strategy optimizes student participation and coordination in
of them in detail.
addition to instructor dedication.
The new approach brought some additional advantages to
S1. Search and classification of information: Students should
the students, such as: planning a coursework assignment
search information about the company and the topic on which
before developing it, execution, multi-stage quality
they are going to work. When students begin this task, they
control/tracking; real-life working conditions (systems and
must be able to search and analyze different sources (books,
clients), and complete project development (working
papers, Internet). They must be able to synthesize all the
prototype).
excessive information the find. They must classify it and
The lab sessions are developed in two semesters, allowing,
select the really relevant for the project.
on one hand, the application of theoretical technical content,
and, on the other, the development of a set of related skills
S2. Report writing: It is essential for an engineer to be able to
with direct bearing on their profession. The practices basically
write a report or to write a manual correctly. Organizations
focus on the development of a real project with a real client.
have document and user manual templates. Students will need
It was decided that a different and more dynamic teaching
to edit different types of formal reports using these templates.
approach was required to stimulate students in place of
traditional lecturing styles based essentially on one-way
S3. Teamwork: The project is carried out in groups of 4 or 5
communication.
students during the two semesters. During this time, the team
The technical capacities (“hard” skills) traditionally
must agree on the tasks and the resources allocation. The MIS
covered in both subjects are usually given without major
course provides brief explanations of the attitudes and skills
difficulties. However, the introduction of “soft” skills usually
necessary to work as a team.
meets greater resistance from students. Typically they do not
know what they are asked or what they have to do. In these
S4. Client management and client expectations: At the first
cases, a list of activities is defined to clarify this point.
meeting between the client and the student team is defined the
Section IV offers details for each activity and the skills and
scope project. Frequently, in any project, they tend to create
attitudes that are developed. The list of activities for each
expectations that exceed of student capabilities and
subject is:
availability of time. Students must manage the interests of
Activities of MIS:
clients throughout the whole project and provide a quick
 A1. Project Statement answer to any query or change requested by them, especially
 A2. Project Authorization to changes in requirements and their implications.
 A3. Development of Project Management Plan
 A4. Formal Technical Reviews S5. Leadership and supervision: Activities are directed in each
Activities of SELab: moment by a student with the role of leader, to reflect the real
 A5. Presentation of PMP to the customer working. The manager is responsible for organizing, planning
 A6. Early project development and directing the needed tasks to achieve each objective. The
 A7. Project development leader is also responsible for presenting the deliverable
 A8. Delivery of final product corresponding to each activity.

Students are grouped in teams of four or five members.
These teams are determined at the beginning of the academic
year and remain throughout the two subjects. Some
adjustments may be necessary due to new students and/or
drop-outs in some of the two subjects.
Each team has a computer at their disposal for the
development of the project from the very beginning of the MIS
course. Some of these computers are provided by the same
companies that are participating in the classroom project. All
S6. Decision making: In different moments of the projects,
students will be forced to make important decisions about
development of the project.
S7. Conflict management: Problems may arise with the client
or among team members at any time during the development
of the project. Students must solve them if they appear, and,
most importantly, prevent their occurrence.

978-1-61284-641-5/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE April 4 - 6, 2010, Amman, Jordan

2011 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON) – "Learning Environments and Ecosystems in Engineering Education"
Page 632
S8. Critical thinking: It should be noted, the importance that
team members are able to critically evaluate the work done by
other teams, as well as the self-critical about their own project.
S9. Evaluation of results: Students should evaluate artifacts
done by other groups throughout both subjects by means of
formal technical reviews and present an evaluation report with
their conclusions.
S10. Communication of results: Students should present results
properly to the client, to other students and to the academics.
During the development of the activities, students should
communicate results to different people in unique formats and
with varying levels of precision.
IV. PROJECT ACTIVITIES
We have already defined the activities in the courses
(section II) and we have described the skills and attitudes
considered in each activity (section III). This section describes
the project development process through the activities where
soft skills and evidences are related. Table IX summarizes the
relationships among activities, soft skills and evidences.
Clients are companies or collaborating institutions selected
by the academics. At the beginning of the course, the
companies submit their project proposals in a Work Project
Statement (WPS) template (Table I). The aim is to simulate a
real situation; therefore, customers receive little guidance on
how to complete this document. The complete list of WPS´s is
reviewed by the instructors before distributing them among the
teams. The distribution of projects is carried out at random.
Most of the projects in the last several years have been related
with software development in Java and .Net environments,
although there have been cases which required developing in
PHP, Python, etc. Once students have received their WPS, they
should begin to plan the tasks to define the scope of the project
(Activity 1).
Then, the team of students must meet with the client
(Activity 2). This first meeting includes attendance by one or
two course instructors. Follow-up meetings are conducted
without instructors, and are the responsibility of the students.
This approach allows students to truly be involved in client
management from the start. The instructors only intervene
upon specific request by either the students or the clients.
TABLE I. WORK PROJECT STATEMENT (WPS)
Information
Institution or Company Name
Title of the project
Description (20 lines maximum)
Coordinators information (name, address, phone, email)
a) Institution or company coordinators
b) Academic coordinators
978-1-61284-641-5/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE
2011 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON) – "Learning Environments and Ecosystems in Engineering Education"
Page 633
Students should present minutes from each meeting. The
minutes are created by editing a template provided in class
(Table II). Students and clients can meet between five and ten
times throughout the course, depending on the nature of the
project.
Each activity performed during the project has a student
that acts as the manager and is responsible for organizing it.
The manager usually coordinates the relationship with the
instructor. The project manager role is rotated among team
members and activities. To facilitate teamwork, students have
access to diverse collaborative tools: svn repository, moodle,
forums and collaborative documents such as google docs or
wikis.
When students have already defined the scope of the
project and they have the authorization to continue with the
project (client and academic authorization), they must
configure the group roles and tools. This conform the “kick-
off” of the project and they begin to develop the PMP. Course
lectures are used to explain each one of the knowledge areas
and the good practices defined in PMBOK. Students should
apply these guidelines to the project that they are developing.
Table III shows the template for the PMP document that
students must complete.
Students are required to present three versions of the PMP
(Activity 3). Each successive version includes corrections
based on external input. The first delivery is half completed. In
the second and third delivery the finished documents are
presented to instructors. The last two deliveries reflect partners'
evaluations conducted by a formal technical review, FTR
(Activity 4). The last delivery is the only one that will be
evaluated by the instructor, using the quality improvement
guidelines as the main factor in determining student grades.
In the FTR, each group of students receives a PMP
document to review from another team. The team leader should
organize the process which is basically a meeting among the
group that develops the product and the one that reviews it.
Using the product definition and meeting as a starting point, the
reviewing group should prepare a report (table IV). The
instructor returns the report to the group without offering
comments. Therefore, this group should critically analyze the
review before accepting or rejecting the proposed changes. The
review is outlined as a process to improve the quality of the
project deliverables. Thus high quality is assured when they are
evaluated by the instructor.
TABLE II. MINUTE REGISTRATION DOCUMENT
Information
Date
Meeting Participants
Agenda for the meeting
Agreements
Outstanding issues to consider at the next meeting
Deliveries (documents or prototypes)
Other topics
April 4 - 6, 2010, Amman, Jordan
 TABLE III. PMP DOCUMENT
Information
Introduction: Objectives, Scope, Recipients, Glossary,
References
Project overview
Project deliverables and acceptance criteria
Work breakdown structure
Organization and project management responsibilities
External dependencies
Alternative solutions
Support activities
Methodology and life cycle
Detailed project planning
Project costs
Project benefits
Quality control
Risk
Communication
Project Monitoring and Control
The first semester ended with the completion of PMP. After
of February exams, student teams immerse themselves once
again in their projects. The first activity in the second semester
is to present the PMP to their respective clients (Activity 5).
One of the students usually acts as the main speaker and the
remaining members participate by responding to client
questions.
It is not uncommon that the client can request changes to
some of the defined requirements, therefore students will have
to adapt the PMP to these new conditions. Changes are
possible on the student side too, for instance, the team structure
may change due to the addition of new students or absence of
others. The active team members who continue in the group are
responsible for bringing new members current on the project
status and to solve possible conflicts.
Students begin the project by defining and deciding on the
development methodology (Activity 6). In most of the cases
the selected methodology is a reduced version of the Unified
Process where they define a set of iterations, obtaining at the
end of each phase a reduced version of the complete project.
TABLE IV. FTR REPORT
Information
Conclusions (accepted, accepted with changes, rejected)
Elements to improve
Elements to add
Elements to eliminate
978-1-61284-641-5/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE
2011 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON) – "Learning Environments and Ecosystems in Engineering Education"
Page 634
Another important aspect to consider at the beginning of
the project development is the additional technical training in
the different technologies that are requested by the client.
Each team carries out the necessary meetings with the
client. In these meetings, partial product deliveries within the
overall project are discussed and presented (table V). The client
evaluates the presented prototypes and proposes pertinent
changes (Activity 7). Students will also have to evaluate other
group projects, using formal technical reviews.
The project arrives to its end and the requested product by
the client (or a prototype) has now been developed and is ready
for presentation (Activity 8). The group should present the
client the final result, including a minimum documentation:
Installation Manual, User Manual and Programmer Guides. In
addition, students must also present the product to the
instructors. Table VI presents the template that students must
follow for the presentation to the companies or institutions.
For academics, students must complete the template described
in table VII.
After the introduction of the different tasks performed in
the project activities, the following subsections detail the skills
that students acquire (named with Sx) and the output evidences
(named with Ex).
Activity 1. Project statement
Students begin this task after receiving the WPS and
basically consist in practice the skill “S1: Search and
classification of information”. It is also essential that students
be able to work the skill “S2: Report writing”. To evaluate this
activity we require some evidences. We ask students to submit
two documents that conforms the evidences: “E1: Report to the
scope of the project” and an “E2: Vocabulary”.
Activity 2. Project authorization
Teams should prepare the first meeting with the client
starting from WPS and searching for information in the
internet, if possible. At this first meeting, the team has prepared
a list of questions they will ask the customer. The minute of
this activity should include the formal authorization to begin
the project. It must be signed by the three counterparts: client,
students and academics.
TABLE V. PROJECT STATUS TEMPLATE
Information
Brief summary of the overall project
Goals achived
Remaining objectives
Version N of the prototype
Issues to solve
Improvements of the actual system
Other considerations
April 4 - 6, 2010, Amman, Jordan

TABLE VI. CLIENT PRESENTATION TEMPLATE
Information
Project goals achived
Deviations between initial vs final PMP
Problems discovered
Solutions
Architectural description
Application prototype
System improvements
Conclusions
This activity mainly develops “S1: Search and
classification of information”, “S2: Report writing” and, in
smaller measure, “S3: teamwork”. To evaluate this activity we
need some evidences. We require students to submit two
documents: “E3: Report with the list of questions for the first
meeting” and “E4: Minute of the first meeting”.
Activity 3. Development of the PMP
The objective in this activity is the writing of the PMP
based on a given template (table VIII). The project has two
fundamental restrictions that students need to consider:
execution time, namely the second semester, and that the team
members are in fact the only resources for the project
development. These restrictions produced conflicts, both with
clients and among themselves, which students should resolve.
Therefore, if they run out of time the only modification
permitted is to redefine the scope.
Abilities in “S4: Client management and client
expectations”, especially about defining project scope, are
clearly developed. When considering all alternative solutions
in the project planning, students should acquire “S6: Decision
making”. Also, they develop “S2: Report writing”, “S3:
Teamwork”, “S5: Leadership and supervision” and “S7:
Conflict management”.
TABLE VII. ACADEMIC PRESENTATION TEMPLATE
Information
Client and Project description
Project deviations from the initial PMP
Final result:
- goals achieved
- the application
- uncovered requirements
Team and personal opinion:
- the project
- the client
- team relationships
Other considerations
978-1-61284-641-5/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE
2011 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON) – "Learning Environments and Ecosystems in Engineering Education"
Page 635
TABLE VIII. FORMAL AUTHORIZATION
Information
Project name and customer
Introduction: Objectives, Description, Glossary, References
Project skateholders
Organization
Project manager
Milestones
Dependences
Assumptions
Restrictions
Project budget and deadlines
To evaluate this activity we need some evidences. We
require students to submit two documents: “E5: Minutes of
meetings” and “E6: PMP”. We also carry out “E7: Customer
surveys” and “E8: Students surveys” to know how the
students have developed the PMP, to know about teamwork
relationship; the work of the leader and the way in which
conflicts has been resolved.
Activity 4. Formal technical reviews (FTR)
Students carry out formal technical reviews of their
partners documents during the writing of the PMP. The formal
technical review is applied twice to the PMP document.
Students become familiar with and apply PMBOK to other
projects and learn how other teams resolved specific issues.
They can apply this experience to their own projects and
thereby improve them.
The most important skills that students need to develop in
this activity are “S8: Critical thinking”, “S9: Evaluation of
results”, “S2: Report writing” and “S10: Communication of
results”.
The evidences to evaluate this activity are the document
“E9: Formal Technical Review” and organizing “E10:
Debates among students”, where instructors check that the
students have acquired the skills expected.
Activity 5. Presentation of the PMP to the customer
This is the first activity that is carried out in the second
semester. Students meet with clients to present the PMP and
deal with them the changes to be made before starting the
project.
The skills that the activity aims to develop are related with
the engineer's capacity to defend their proposals: “S4: Client
management and client expectations” and “S10:
Communication of results”. The evidence to evaluate this
activity is “E7: Customer surveys” to know the satisfaction of
the customers with the group.
Activity 6. Early project development
In this activity, students choose the final development
methodology that will be used throughout the project. A
April 4 - 6, 2010, Amman, Jordan
student acts as project leader and the tasks are divided among
all the members.
In this case, the main soft skills are “S3: Teamwork” and
“S5: Leadership and supervision”, and they are evaluate using
the evidence “E8: Students surveys”.
Activity 7. Project development
Project development is the most important activity in this
course because it is in this area where students are really
involved in product development for a client.
Students are organized to meet with the client, divide the
work, have internal coordination meetings, etc. It is important
to emphasize that the instructors are included in all
communications between students and customers (usually e-
mails); however, they do not intervene unless there is a
specific request (i.e. unresolved conflicts). The template
document students must complete is in table V.
This activity is where students usually feel more
comfortable, they are used to analyze, design and code, and
they begin to “see” the results of the new system. Soft skills
are worked out mixed with the technical tasks. Is in this
activity where more soft skills are developed: “S3:
Teamwork”, “S5: Leadership and supervision”, “S6:
Decision making”, “S7: Conflict management”, “S8: Critical
thinking” and “S9: Evaluation of results”.
The evidences to evaluate this activity are the document
“E9: Formal Technical Review” and the reports obtained
from the organization of “E10: Debates among students”,
where instructors check that the students have acquired the
expected skills. We also carry out “E8: Students surveys” to
know the internal experiences of the group.
Activity 8. Delivery of final product
When the project arrives to its end, students should present the
product to the clients, and they also discuss the problems
found in the development and possible improvements of the
finished product. The students should be able to convey the
product strengths to the client, in other words, "sell" their
product. In addition, a product presentation to the instructors is
required to pass the course. The deliverable related to the
product is equivalent to table V, but considering that the
project has finished. Students must also present to the client
and to academics the final results. This is done in a formal
presentation as indicated in tables VI and VII.
In this case, the soft skills that the student should
assimilate are related with the communication of the
knowledge obtained throughout the project development
process: “S2: Report writing” and “S10: Communication of
results”. To evaluate this activity we need some evidences.
We require students to submit one document “E11: Final
report” where they explain the project developed and the
product obtained. We also carry out “E8: Students surveys” to
know the internal experiences to group. And, finally, we
consider the “E12: Product presentation” to evaluate
students‟ ability to “sell” the product.
978-1-61284-641-5/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE
2011 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON) – "Learning Environments and Ecosystems in Engineering Education"
Page 636
V. CONCLUSIONS
Working on real problems with real clients is a fundamental
element for the development of student´s technical knowledge
and soft skills which did not receive sufficient attention in
earlier academic programs.
The aim of this experience is to simultaneously develop the
technical knowledge found in project management together
with necessary soft skills in an integrated way. We have
changed the teaching styles, to be student centered, where
students are expected to participate actively in the learning
process, while the teacher undertakes the role as a facilitator.
The MIS and SELab instructors have been able to develop
required professional skills (soft skills) for future Software
Engineers. These skills are mostly related to teamwork and
leadership. The instructors fulfill these objectives by mainly
promoting the leadership roles in student-leaders/managers
who take on responsibilities including organization, planning,
pursuit and evaluation of a series of guided activities which
will result in hands-on learning.
Having well defined activities in the development of the
real project, with their corresponding skills to acquire and
evidences as outputs, give students a perfect framework to
improve their professional skills.
Companies and public institutions must participate in these
activities so they can offer academics with the new and more
demanded skills in the real life. They can collaborate through
seminars, talks and workshops. Academic institutions should
provide more activities to acquire soft skills in different
context: in the subjects, in related subjects at the same time,
and at faculty or university context.
For instructors, an increase of work is observed. They have
to deal not only with technical knowledge teaching, but also
with soft skills development.
For students, the satisfaction surveys suggest that these
experiences are very welcome and they hope other subjects
could include this kind of activities. Students are more
motivated, not only due to the development of a real project,
but acquiring social high demanded skills.
We believe that these experiences are very positive to begin
the road to reform of the higher education qualifications in
order to comply with quality challenges of the new higher
education in Europe.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We thank all the companies that have collaborated over the
past five years. Their contributions have been crucial not only
for students to acquire knowledge is needed in the workplace
but also important for academics to know the needs and market
trends.
REFERENCES
[1] The Bologna proccess: setting up the European Higher Education Area:
http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/education_training_youth/lifelon
g_learning/c11088_en.htm
[2] The Bologna proccess – Towards the European Higher Education Area:
http://ec.europa.eu/education/higher-education/doc1290_en.htm
[3] IEEE Computer Society. “Software Engineering 2004”: Curriculum
Guidelines for Undergraduate Degree Programs in Software
April 4 - 6, 2010, Amman, Jordan
 Engineering, The joint Task Force on computing Curricula. Association
for Computing Machinery. August 2004.
[4] Aspray W., Mayadas F., Vardi M.Y., Editors: “Globalization and
Offshoring of Software, A Report of the ACM Job Migration Task
Force.” ACM 2006, http://www.acm.org/globalizationreport/
[5] L. Tripp . “Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge:
2004 Version SWEBOK. 2005. ISBN 0-7695-2330-7
[6] R. Shakir. “Soft skills at the Malaysian institutes of higher learning”.
Asia Pacific Education Review, 2009, pp. 309-315.
[7] J. Noguez and E. Espinosa. “Improving learning and soft skills using
Project Oriented Learning in software engineering courses”. 2nd
International Workshop on Designing Computational Models of
Collaborative Learning Interaction at ITS2004, 2004.
[8] C. S. Nair and A. Patil. “Industry vs Universities: Re-engineering
Graduate Skills – A Case Study”. Proceeding of the Australian
Universities Quality Forum 2008.
[9] T. Ceylan. “Development of „Soft Skills‟ in technical elective”.
American Society for Engineering Education Conference. 2006.
[10] R. Ziegler. “Student perceptions of “Soft” skills in Mechanical
Engineering”. International Conference on Engineering Education, ICEE
2007.
[11] Structure of the new Bachelor of Computer Engineering. ETSII. ULL (in
spanish),
http://www.ull.es/view/centros/etsii/Informacion_sobre_el_grado/es
[12] PMBOK Guide and Standard, http://www.pmi.org/PMBOK-Guide-and-
Standards.aspx

TABLE IX. RELATIONSHIPS AMONG ACTIVITIES, SOFT SKILLS AND EVIDENCES

Subject Activity (A1-A8) Skills (S1-S10) Evidences

S1: Search and Classification of Information Report of the scope project (S1,S2)
A1: Project Statement
S2: Report writing Vocabulary (S1,S2)
S1: Search and Classification of Information Design interview (S1,S2,S3)
A2: Project Authorization S2: Report writing Act with initial client meeting (S1,S2,S3)
S3: Teamwork
S2: Report writing Acts (S2, S4)
Management
S3: Teamwork PMP deliverable (S2, S4)
Information
S4: Client management and client expectations Student surveys (S3,S5,S6,S7)
Systems A3: Development of the PMP
S5: Leadership and supervision Customer surveys (S4)
(MIS)
S6: Decision making
S7: Conflict management
S2: Report writing Debate (S8, S9, S10)
S8: Critical thinking FTR (S2, S8, S9, S10)
A4: Formal Technical Reviews (FTR)
S9: Evaluation of results
S10: Communication of results
S4: Client management and client expectations Presentation documents (S10)
A5: Presentation of PMP to client
S10: Communication of results Customer surveys (S4, S10)
S3: Teamwork Student surveys (S3, S5)
A6: Early project development
S5: Leadership and supervision
S3: Teamwork Student surveys (S3,S5,S6,S7,S8)
Software S5: Leadership and supervision Debates (S5, S8, S9)
Engineering S6: Decision making FTR (S9)
Laboratory A7: Project development S7: Conflict management
(SELab) S8: Critical thinking
S9: Evaluation of results

S2: Report writing Final report (S2, S10).

A8: Delivery of final product S10: Communication of results Academic presentation (S10)
Customer surveys (S10)

978-1-61284-641-5/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE April 4 - 6, 2010, Amman, Jordan

2011 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON) – "Learning Environments and Ecosystems in Engineering Education"
Page 637

View publication stats