Survey of Technical and Soft Skills Learners Acquired in a Software Engineering Project Course

Project-Based Learning (hereafter, PBL) is adopted as a method of human resource development for software engineers. It is clarified that PBL has high learning effectiveness, especially technical and soft skills acquisition. Bastarrica et al. conducted a survey on learners' initial and final perception about the relative value and difficulty of different dimensions involved in their agile development projects: technical challenge, teamwork, planning and negotiation with the client. Technical challenge is an abstract item. This study aims to clarify learners' skills acquisition in a waterfall model based software engineering project course by conducting a questionnaire survey that is composed of 24 items regarding technical and soft skills before, during and after PBL. The learners recognized they acquired both technical and soft skills at high level at the end of the course. At the survey before the course, scores of soft skills are relatively higher than those of technical skills. As the course progresses, the technical skills where the learners experienced increased. Meetings and/or reviews within team and/or feedback by the teaching staff such as inspection and/or acceptance testing contribute to their learning. While acquisition of soft skills increase through activities of upstream phases, it does not increase through activities of downstream phases.