José Luis Roda García

Teaching “soft” skills in Software Engineering

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.

A process and a tool to assess vocabulary learning for Computer Science Engineers

The study that we are presenting in this paper has been conducted with Computer Science Engineering students. We have selected a group of volunteers to use an educational software platform called Vocabulary Notebook to acquire specific vocabulary/concepts that are taught in the subjects “Technical English” and “IT Project Management”. In this study we are assessing both the usability of the tool (observing students while using it and extracting conclusions and metrics) and also observing and analyzing the methodology that students apply when it comes to organizing the concepts, by using their own categories, definitions, applying filters and doing self-assessment tests. By the end of the study we will collect this data into a survey and a questionnaire, where we will ask students for feedback about the process and tool. In addition to analyzing the results, by the end of the semester we will also compare the marks obtained by our subject students with the marks of the rest of the class.