Soft Skill Development along the Education Path Evaluating expectations on and perceptions of student competencies in Software Engineering education

Authors

  • Axel Böttcher
  • Veronika Thurner
  • Veronika Winter

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3991/ijep.v2i3.2148

Keywords:

soft skill competencies, self competencies, social competencies, practical and learning competencies, competence tests, introductory skill and competence levels, skill gap

Abstract


In our everyday teaching we experience that many first-year students are ill prepared for the demands of an academic study process in technical domains. Usually, the students’ problems are not rooted in a lack of intellectual capacity or previously acquired founding expertise in the chosen course of study. Rather, it is the deficiencies in more basic competencies such as practical and cognitive, self and social areas that place a major hurdle in the students’ learning process. In an attempt to elucidate and improve this situation, as a first step we develop a questionnaire that captures the high school teachers’ as well as the lecturers’ expectations on student competencies in these areas, as opposed to their perception of competencies that first-year students possess in reality. This questionnaire is also applied to capture the university-employer skill gap.

Author Biographies

Axel Böttcher

Department of Computer Science and Mathematics

Department Chair for Academic Affairs

Veronika Thurner

Department of Computer Science and Mathematics

Veronika Winter

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research assistant.

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Published

2012-07-06

How to Cite

Böttcher, A., Thurner, V., & Winter, V. (2012). Soft Skill Development along the Education Path Evaluating expectations on and perceptions of student competencies in Software Engineering education. International Journal of Engineering Pedagogy (iJEP), 2(3), pp. 19–28. https://doi.org/10.3991/ijep.v2i3.2148

Issue

Section

Papers