ENHANCING STUDENTS’ SOFT SKILLS BY IMPLEMENTING CDIOBASED INTEGRATION TEACHING MODE

Currently, the software industries are paying crucial attention towards soft skills at the time of hiring new professionals, so there is a stringent need to enhance the role of the soft-skills in software development curriculum. During the four-year program, software engineering students are trained with a comprehensive amount of theoretical and applied coursework but soft skills training is not given significant importance. Moreover, students as compared to other subjects pay little attention towards soft skills. At Duy Tan University, with close vision to enlighten soft skills importance, we integrated two courses, which are focus on CDIO procedure (CDIO project level 1 (CMU-CS 297) and CDIO project level 2 (CMU-CS 397)), into the training program to offer students with practical experience in supervision, project management, quality control and decision-making. Student teams composed of 4 or 5 members are primarily responsible for solving game’s problems (in CMU-CS 297) and developing a software project (in CMU-CS 397). In CMU-CS 397 course, the finished product is delivered upon project completion. The project evaluation is based on formal technical reviews of prototypes produced during the project life cycle basing on the stages of CDIO approach. Two instructors are appointed as mentors during course flow to support teams from conceiving to operating product. The objective of this paper is to present a field study in which 45 students are interviewed from these two courses to analyze their viewpoint regarding soft skills importance towards making themselves, successful professional software developers. The study is also conducted via group discussion with instructors to figure out the best possible information for research. The paper answers mainly two research questions: (1) What soft skills are appropriate for software developers, and (2) How instructors should possibly organize and conduct CDIO courses to enhance soft skills for students? After thorough analysis, that Leadership, Debate, Presentation, Teamwork, and Time management skills are the most valued for students. In CMU-CS 297 course, instructors should provide multiple types of games to enhance Debate and Time management skills of students. For CMU-CS 397, mentors should encourage students to apply Scrum or Agile methodology to improve the Leadership skills for overall development.