Teaching communication skills in software engineering courses

Abstract

Communication skills are important to software engineers. Yet, this topic is sometimes overlooked in computer science and software engineering curricula. To address this problem, we attempted to explicitly teach communication skills in a software engineering course. We experimented with a number of approaches, including lectures by the instructor, student presentations, mini-lectures mixed with in-class discussions, and other in-class activities such as student-designed scenarios. The results of these approaches were mixed. There were approaches that clearly worked better than one or more other approaches; there were also approaches to which students with different backgrounds responded differently. Overall, after taking this course, students communicated better and were more self-confident in team environments. Our experience shows that with careful planning and innovative pedagogy, we can help our students become both technically competent software engineers or computer scientists, and good team players in the same time.