Adding 'professional awareness' to the software engineering curriculum

Abstract

This paper presents a proposal to integrate the learning skills and professional awareness in an engineering education course for the Professional School of Software Engineering at the National University of San Augustine, Arequipa - Peru. The known problems of writing and oral communication in technical careers from other engineering programs are outlined. Engineering student's improvements reached by other engineering programs is explained and discussed as the jumping board for the development of the new course. The goals for initial professional awareness in student's communication artifacts were related to specific Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) criteria. A new course called Writing Articles and Research Reports (RAII) taught within the student's major department was created emphasizing effective communication and the need for continuous learning with the understanding of ethics and professional responsibility. The constructivist approach was used to design the course and an exposition of the mapping between the design of the course and the skills that are intended to achieve is outlined in the paper. The investigation includes the student's initial opinions regarding the impact of the new focus in the development of their professional skills and abilities.