Personal mastery based learning process to develop communication skills for software engineering undergraduate students

Abstract

The 13th National Economic and Social Development Plan (2023-2027) focuses on developing infrastructure, logistics, and digital technology to provide access and services for all groups of people. In addition, Thailand seeks to become the ASEAN hub of the digital industry. As a result, there is an increasing demand for qualified digital skills in software development teams and the software industry. Previous studies have shown that communication skills are essential to the success of software projects. It was found that new graduates in information and communication technology fields still lack communication skills. Developing students' skills to be ready to work in the industrial sector is one of the missions of higher education institutions to produce graduates to support the needs of the industrial sector. Project-based learning is a widely used learning method in software engineering education and promotes the development of communication skills in software development among students. Assessment of communication skills used primarily focuses on performance measurement. However, few studies have been reported linking personal mastery and self-efficacy to the development of software development communication skills. The principle of personal mastery emphasizes goal-setting and dedication to achieving success. Perceived self-efficacy is a predictor of an individual's performance and success in various fields. Individuals with high self-efficacy are more likely to complete challenging tasks with confidence and consistency. Understanding the self-efficacy of communication skills in software development can be used to adapt instructional approaches to enhance learners' skills. This study presents a personal mastery-based learning process and a self-efficacy questionnaire in communication for software development to develop communication skills among undergraduate students in software engineering. The research procedures are as follows: (1) Identify software development communication skills required for software engineering students. A preliminary study and literary review were conducted to determine the causes and issues underlying graduates' communication skills that did not meet industry requirements. The 32 necessary communication skills for software development for new graduates in software development have been identified. (2) Establish links of concepts and theories associated with personal mastery and communication skills for software development. The principle of personal mastery at the practical level was used in learning and developing software projects. Project accomplishment resulted in self-efficacy in communicating tasks in the software process. This research presents the concept of measuring communication self-efficacy for software development. (3) Develop an instrument for measuring self-efficacy in communication for software development and validate the instrument by evaluating the Index of item object congruence (IOC) index. A questionnaire consisting of 24 skills was tried out to determine its reliability before being used to collect data from 62 senior software engineering students from six universities in Thailand. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the questionnaire was 0.951, indicating a high level of reliability. (4) Design a learning process framework to develop communication skills for software engineering undergraduates. Personal mastery, problem-based learning, and self-directed learning have been integrated into the Scrum s development methodology. The concept of design thinking was implemented to improve communication skills during the software development process. (5) Design an experiment to evaluate the designed learning process. Participants were the forth-year software engineering students at Prince of Songkla University Phuket Campus. The experimental group in the first batch was students enrolled in software engineering project courses in the academic year 2020, and the control group was students enrolled in software engineering project courses in the academic year 2019. (6) Evaluate the conceptual framework of the designed learning process. The designed conceptual framework was used in the instructional design for the software engineering project course in the academic year 2020 and used a t-test to compare the mean of communication self-efficacy for software development and a self-directed learning questionnaire before and after learning. The results indicate that means of most items after the study were higher than before. A comparison of communication self-efficacy for software development between the experimental and control groups revealed that the experimental group's questionnaire item means were significantly higher than those of the control group. (7) Revise the learning process framework and evaluation. The results from the questionnaires obtained in the first batch of experiments were used to improve the framework. Students enrolled in the software engineering project course during the 2021 academic year participated in the second batch of experiments. A t-test to compare the mean of items in the communication self-efficacy for software development and self-directed learning found that the means of the majority of items were higher, corresponding with the first batch's experiment. Single linear regression analysis was applied to examine the relationship between variables. The results indicate that communication self-efficacy for software development has a positive correlation with and can predict students' perceived learning outcomes at 41.1% and 23.1%, respectively, in the first and second experimental groups. The results of interviews with graduates and employers indicate that the proposed learning process can be used in teaching and learning to improve students’ confidence in their communication skills in real-world software development processes. The two main findings of this study are the measurement instrument of communication self-efficacy for software development and the personal mastery-based learning process to develop communication skills for software development. These findings can be used to assess communication skills and plan for communication skills development in order to produce graduates with communication skills that meet the needs of the software industry