Teaching Generic Competences in Software Engineering via E-Learning

Greetings from Yogyakarta, at the IEEE TALE 2019 engineering education conference, where Marco Klopp from University of Applied Sciences Aschaffenburg (UASA), just talked on on "Teaching Generic Competences in Software Engineering via E-Learning". This described  a Moodle based e-learning module added to a group project software engineering course to teach communication and other "generic" competences.

"Abstract— The discipline ‘Software Engineering’ is difficult to represent in higher education, because of the complexity of software development projects and the variety of skills required. In addition to specialist skills (professional competences), generic competences are increasingly becoming the focus of education. This paper deals with the training of generic competences in the software engineering module. For this purpose, an existing didactic concept was enhanced by E-Learning with the help of a Moodle course."

This was of interest as last year I was asked to develop a similar Moodle module, and delivered it to about three hundred students in the ANU TechLaunhcer program this year. Marco's analysis found their module did not improve student competencies. I had a slightly more positive outcome, in that the Moodle module was no worse than traditional classroom teaching. The difference was perhaps because the UASA module did not count towards the student's final grade, so they may not have studied the material as diligently as they should. In contrast the module at ANU made up 20% of the mark for the course.