What can students get from a software engineering capstone course?

Abstract

For the last ten years we have been teaching acapstone course for fifth year students of the Computer ScienceDepartment of the Universidad de Chile. Five year ago weredesigned the course, shifting from projects following a waterfallprocess and focused on technical aspects, to one centered insoft skills following agile practices. Since then, we provide outstudents a concrete learning outcome: to internalize how relevantis having and developing critical soft skills to succeed in projects.Last year, we wondered whether our students were actuallygetting what we declared. We conducted a survey on students’initial and final perception about the relative value and difficultyof different dimensions involved in their projects: technicalchallenge, teamwork, planning, and negotiation with the client.Also, we applied a one-tailed dependent pair sample t-test todetermine the statistical significance of the surveys result. Wefound out that the relative value of soft skills grows while thatof the technical challenge drops, and that the students find thatplanning and teamwork are harder than they expected. Also, wefound statistically significant evidence that, for the soft skills wehave measured, the perceived relative relevance actually changesthroughout the course.