Datasets of "FraSSD: a framework to help teachers in the challenge of developing hard and soft skills in Software Engineering students"

Hard and soft skills are essential for software professionals to perform their daily activities successfully, considering the specificities of the area, which requires a combination of different skills during the software development cycle. Thus, professionals must develop such skills from undergraduate onwards. In this context, although there are related works in the literature, no results were found that were aimed at supporting teachers in developing students' soft skills in the classroom through active education methodologies, focusing on student motivation. Therefore, to provide a model to help teachers in the challenge of contemplating hard and soft skills in a more meaningful teaching-learning process for students enrolled in Software Engineering subjects, this paper presents a framework based on the active methodologies PBL - Project Based Learning and role-play. Emphasis was placed on the six main soft skills required of software engineers: communication, teamwork, organization, leadership, learning, and creativity. To complement the motivational elements, the framework, called FraSSD – Framework for Soft Skills Development, uses some gamification elements, namely competition, scoring, and scoreboard. Finally, the activities established for students are based on Bloom's Taxonomy, which provides progressive knowledge development. As a proof of concept, FraSSD was applied in two Software Engineering classes, and a self-evaluation was conducted on the part of the students before and after the development of the project proposed by the framework, in which students evaluated their level of development in each of the six soft skills worked on during the course. The results were compared through statistical testing, showing an increase in the level of development of soft skills worked on, emphasizing organization, creativity, and teamwork in Class 1 and teamwork, creativity, and leadership in Class 2. Furthermore, a phenomenological analysis of an open question in the self-evaluation enabled FraSSD's positive points to be observed, as well as suggestions for improvements. From the teachers' point of view who applied the framework, although they suggested some modifications, they considered the FraSSD model easy to implement, which helped motivate students as opposed to traditional teaching methods.