Abstract:

The competence profile required of graduates in software engineering is that complex that it is difficult for the students to access. Individual courses can only address small sections of the overall picture of the competences to be trained. For this reason, the purpose of individual methods and contents is difficult to classify into the overall curriculum of software engineering education. Even if the meaning of competences and methods to be trained become clear, students usually are not able to locate them into the complex competence profile demanded. Furthermore it is difficult for students to imagine how the skills demanded from them will be put to practical use later on. However, it is important for the learning process to develop this overview of the competence goals to be achieved and their practical foundation in order to be able to derive individual learning goals.

Currently there is no instrument that supports this task. Discourses that demonstrate the necessary competence profile in software engineering mainly focus on technical knowledge and often present the results from a scientific perspective, which is hardly accessible to students. This results in the necessity to translate the scientific results in relation to the required competence profile in software engineering into the language of the students and to adapt the level of abstraction to the state of the students´ understanding. It is also indispensable to present the competence profile holistically and to describe both technical and interdisciplinary competences.

In order to meet these requirements and to improve the learning and teaching in software engineering education, a “Competence Atlas” was developed with the aim of providing the students with an overall picture of the competences to be trained in an appropriate language and with a practical reference. For this, existing scientific findings of competence research where validated with the results of interviews with practice partners from various disciplines in software engineering in order to link both, the scientific and the practical perspectives. In order to enable the students to get a practice-oriented picture of the requirements in software engineering, an identification figure in form of a student is introduced in the “Competence Atlas”. This student moves through the curriculum and, based on his theoretical experience, gets to know the tasks and competences required in the single phases of software development and the phase-overlapping requirements in an internship.

The resulting “Competence Atlas” should provide students with an early indication of the spectrum of required competences and, ideally, reduce student drop-outs due to false expectations of the subject. For this reason, the document is used directly in the courses of software engineering education. There it forms a frame of reference through which the competences addressed in a course can be integrated into the general context of the subject.

This facilitates the students' understanding of the methods used in software engineering and the level of competence that should be achieved.

The “Competence Atlas” is expected to stimulate the examination of the competences required in software engineering. Furthermore, it stimulates students' self-reflection and thus supports their individual competence assessment and development. This, in turn, has a direct and immediate impact on the improvement of teaching and learning in software engineering.

Keywords:

Competence Profile, Competence Atlas, Software Engineering.