research-article

Ideas for adding soft skills education to service learning and capstone courses for computer science students

Author:

Lori CarterAuthors Info & Claims

SIGCSE '11: Proceedings of the 42nd ACM technical symposium on Computer science education

Pages 517 - 522

https://doi.org/10.1145/1953163.1953312

Published: 09 March 2011 Publication History

Get Access

Abstract

Soft skills such as communication, teamwork, and organization are important to students' future success in the working world. Faculty members know it, students know it, and employers are explicitly asking for these skills. Are computer science departments responsible to teach these skills? If so, where in the curriculum should they be covered? This paper explores the soft skills that employers want, and possible places to include the teaching of those skills in the curriculum. It then shows how an extensive set of soft skills were incorporated into a service learning course for the students in the Mathematical, Information and Computer Sciences department at Point Loma Nazarene University. Finally, it makes suggestions as to how other service learning or capstone courses could be altered to afford more opportunity for soft skill education.

References

[1]

Abernethy, K. and Treu, K. 2009. Teaching computing soft skills: an experiential approach. J. Comput. Small Coll. 25, 2 (Dec. 2009), 178--186.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[2]

Brown, Q., Lee, F., and Alejandre, S. 2009. Emphasizing soft skills and team development in an educational digital game design course. In Proceedings of the 4th international Conference on Foundations of Digital Games (Orlando, Florida, April 26 - 30, 2009). FDG '09. ACM, New York, NY, 240--247. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1536513.1536557

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[3]

Carter, L. 2009. The business of service learning. In Proceedings of the 39th IEEE international Conference on Frontiers in Education Conference (San Antonio, Texas, USA, October 18 - 21, 2009). IEEE Press, Piscataway, NJ

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[4]

EPICS at Purdue University, http://epics.ecn.purdue.edu/

Google Scholar

[5]

Epstein, J. 2010. Teaching a leader. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/06/15/leadership accessed 6/15/2010.

Google Scholar

[6]

Fernandez, J. D. and Tedford, P. 2006. Evaluating computing education programs against real world needs. J. Comput. Small Coll. 21, 4 (Apr. 2006), 259--265.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[7]

Greene, M. 2006. Career report: computer science. The Black Collegian Magazine. http://www.black-collegian.com/issues/1stsem06/greene_computer_science.htm

Google Scholar

[8]

Hissey, T.W. 2000. Enhanced skills for engineers. Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 88, No. 8, (August 2000)

Google Scholar

[9]

Johnston, S and McGregor, H. Recognising and Supporting a Scholarship of Practice: Soft Skills Are Hard! In Creating Flexible Learning Environments: Proceedings of the 15th Australasian Conference for the Australasian Association for Engineering Education and the 10th Australasian Women in Engineering Forum. Toowoomba, Qld: Australasian Association for Engineering Education, 2004: 68--77.

Google Scholar

[10]

Kabicher, S., Motschnig-Pitrik, R., and Figl, K. 2009. What competences do employers, staff and students expect from a computer science graduate?. In Proceedings of the 39th IEEE international Conference on Frontiers in Education Conference (San Antonio, Texas, USA, October 18 - 21, 2009). IEEE Press, Piscataway, NJ, 1260--1265.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[11]

Matusovich, H., Streveler, R., and Miller, R. 2009. We are teaching engineering students what they need to know, aren't we?. In Proceedings of the 39th IEEE international Conference on Frontiers in Education Conference (San Antonio, Texas, USA, October 18 - 21, 2009). IEEE Press, Piscataway, NJ, 1254--1259.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[12]

Pulko, S. H and Parikh, S.2003. Teaching "soft" skills to engineers. International Journal of Electrical Engineering Education, Oct 2003.

Google Scholar

[13]

Spokane Community College: Computer Information Systems webpage. http://cis.scc.spokane.edu/?cissoftdev accessed 6/12/10.

Google Scholar

[14]

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Computer Software Engineers and Computer Programmers. Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2010--11 Edition

Google Scholar

Cited By

View all

Shakil ADenny PMonga MLonati VBarendsen ESheard JPaterson J(2024)Enhancing Student Engagement in Large-Scale Capstone Courses: An Experience ReportProceedings of the 2024 on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3649217.3653580(722-728)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649217.3653580
Lee EDanukarjanto LSharmin SHung SHuang SSu TStephenson BStone JBattestilli LRebelsky SShoop L(2024)Exploring Student Motivation in Integration of Soft Skills Training within Three Levels of Computer Science ProgramsProceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3626252.3630852(708-714)Online publication date: 7-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3626252.3630852
Williams CKurkovsky SGoldweber MSommer N(2024)WIP: A Systematic Approach to Screen and Align Service-Learning Projects for Optimal Student Outcomes2024 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE61694.2024.10893515(1-5)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE61694.2024.10893515
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Ideas for adding soft skills education to service learning and capstone courses for computer science students
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education
      2. Model curricula

Recommendations

Teaching and learning computer science soft skills using soft skills: the students' perspective
SIGCSE '14: Proceedings of the 45th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education

This paper continues a previous paper [1] in which we described students' gradual understanding of computer science (CS) and software engineering (SE) soft skills. Our study focused on a course we taught on soft skills in CS and SE, offered by the ...
Practicing and Evaluating Soft Skills in IT Capstone Projects
SIGITE '15: Proceedings of the 16th Annual Conference on Information Technology Education

Information technology (IT) professionals have constantly stressed the importance of soft skills and used them as a key factor in hiring and career development. The soft skills are often difficult to be practiced and evaluated in IT curriculum, ...
Soft Skills: What do Computing Program Syllabi Reveal About Non-Technical Expectations of Undergraduate Students?
ITiCSE '20: Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education

Industry expectations of graduates are higher than ever. Not only are they required to be skilled in several technologies, but also need to be equipped with non-technical skills - often called soft skills or professional skills. This puts pressure on ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

SIGCSE '11: Proceedings of the 42nd ACM technical symposium on Computer science education

March 2011

754 pages

ISBN:9781450305006

DOI:10.1145/1953163

General Chairs:
Thomas J. Cortina
Carnegie Mellon University
,
Ellen L. Walker
Hiram College
,
Program Chairs:
Laurie Smith King
College of the Holy Cross
,
David R. Musicant
Carleton College

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 09 March 2011

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Conference

SIGCSE '11

Sponsor:

SIGCSE

SIGCSE '11: The 42nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

March 9 - 12, 2011

TX, Dallas, USA

Acceptance Rates

SIGCSE '11 Paper Acceptance Rate 107 of 315 submissions, 34%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 1,787 of 5,146 submissions, 35%

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

50
Total Citations
View Citations
865
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)35
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)1

Reflects downloads up to 25 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all

Shakil ADenny PMonga MLonati VBarendsen ESheard JPaterson J(2024)Enhancing Student Engagement in Large-Scale Capstone Courses: An Experience ReportProceedings of the 2024 on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3649217.3653580(722-728)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649217.3653580
Lee EDanukarjanto LSharmin SHung SHuang SSu TStephenson BStone JBattestilli LRebelsky SShoop L(2024)Exploring Student Motivation in Integration of Soft Skills Training within Three Levels of Computer Science ProgramsProceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3626252.3630852(708-714)Online publication date: 7-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3626252.3630852
Williams CKurkovsky SGoldweber MSommer N(2024)WIP: A Systematic Approach to Screen and Align Service-Learning Projects for Optimal Student Outcomes2024 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE61694.2024.10893515(1-5)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE61694.2024.10893515
Exter MYakut NSabin MTagare DAshby I(2024)Work in Progress: Importance of Dispositions on the Job: Survey of Computing Professionals2024 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE61694.2024.10893432(1-5)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE61694.2024.10893432
Borges GGratão de Souza R(2024)Skills Development for Software Engineers: Systematic Literature ReviewInformation and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2023.107395(107395)Online publication date: Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2023.107395
Farias AAugusto Couto Barone D(2023)Computational thinking through an online game to develop soft and hard skills2023 32nd Annual Conference of the European Association for Education in Electrical and Information Engineering (EAEEIE)10.23919/EAEEIE55804.2023.10181711(1-6)Online publication date: 14-Jun-2023
https://doi.org/10.23919/EAEEIE55804.2023.10181711
Robledo Yamamoto FBarker LVoida A(2023)CISing Up Service Learning: A Systematic Review of Service Learning Experiences in Computer and Information ScienceACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/361077623:3(1-56)Online publication date: 12-Sep-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3610776
Rismani SMoon A(2023)What does it mean to be a responsible AI practitioner: An ontology of roles and skillsProceedings of the 2023 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society10.1145/3600211.3604702(584-595)Online publication date: 8-Aug-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3600211.3604702
Hundhausen CConrad PAdesope OTariq A(2023)Combining GitHub, Chat, and Peer Evaluation Data to Assess Individual Contributions to Team Software Development ProjectsACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/359359223:3(1-23)Online publication date: 22-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3593592
Hundhausen CConrad PAdesope OTariq ASbai SLu ADoyle MStephenson BDorn BSoh LBattestilli L(2023)Investigating Reflection in Undergraduate Software Development TeamsProceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3545945.3569790(743-749)Online publication date: 2-Mar-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3545945.3569790
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Abstract

References

Cited By

Index Terms

Recommendations

Teaching and learning computer science soft skills using soft skills: the students' perspective

Practicing and Evaluating Soft Skills in IT Capstone Projects

Soft Skills: What do Computing Program Syllabi Reveal About Non-Technical Expectations of Undergraduate Students?

Comments

Information

Published In

Sponsors

Publisher

Publication History

Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Conference

Acceptance Rates

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Login options

Full Access

View options

PDF

eReader

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media

Affiliations