Title: Teaching Soft Skills in a Systems Development Capstone Class Jack Russell jrussellnsula.edu Barbara
1Teaching Soft Skills in a Systems Development
Capstone ClassJack Russelljrussell_at_nsula.eduB
arbara Russellbrussell_at_nsula.eduNorthwestern
State UniversityNatchitoches, LA 71497William
J. TastleTastle_at_Ithaca.eduIthaca, New York
14850
2Abstract Summary
- Unquestionably, there is agreement between
industry and educators that soft skills should be
emphasized with the IS curriculum more. - A more rigorous approach to teaching soft skills
within the IS curricula is needed. - The IS 2002 Model Curricula emphasizes its
importance in the IS 2002-10 course - The authors recommend specific behavioral
objectives be identified and taught across the IS
curriculum, and especially in a capstone IS
experience centered on team performance.
3Introduction
- Industry leaders have told the same story for
many years that what they are looking for in a
new grad is - An ability to communicate effectively both orally
and in writing. - A desire and evidence of ability to work
effectively within a team. - An ability to solve problems creatively.
- An ability to make decisions.
4Questions Recruiters Often Ask
- Tell me about the team project that you
completed? - How were you able to motivate others on the team
to carry out their job? - Tell me about the team you worked with a X-Mart
the summer while doing your internship, and what
leadership role did you play during this period? - Can you provide an example of how your team
resolved an issue? - Can you describe an example of how you were able
to resolve conflict within the team that may have
come up during the project?
5New Graduates' Soft Skills Critical to Mission
Critical Projects using New Technologies
- Industry sees that the students ability to
communicate, ability to cooperate, and ability to
work in diverse environments are critical skills
needed to succeed in todays fast paced
profession of IS. - Because of the new grads technical prowess in
new cutting-edge technologies they are even more
likely to be cast into leadership roles on
mission critical projects. - As educators we continue to fall short in making
sure these new high demand grads with strong
technical skills will have the interpersonal
skills needed to perform well within a mission
critical corporate IS team.
6More Formal Instruction Should Be Devoted to Soft
Skills in the Classroom
- A more rigorous approach to the teaching of soft
skills with the IS curricula is needed, says
Carol OBrien from JC Penney. - On the average students spend less than 1/1000 of
their college study time actually engaged in
enhancing their interpersonal and teaming skills. - Students spend approximately 5700 hours preparing
for an IS degree with only 4 of those hours
typically devoted to soft skill behavioral
objectives.
Howard 2002, Lauckner 2002, McGinnis 2001
7Soft Skills Most Sought After by Industry
- Demonstrate effective interpersonal relations.
- Demonstrate self-management strategies.
- Work within teams.
- Creatively solve problems.
- Make Decisions.
www.CompanyCollege.com
8Social Skills are Needed to Enable a New Hire to
- Cooperate with others.
- Interact within the work place.
- Advance to new positions and responsibilities
within the company.
Obrien 2002
9To Advance to New Positions the IS Professional
must be able to
- Cooperate
- Accept supervision
- Work within diverse environments
- Resolve conflict.
- Provide supervision for others.
(Owen 2001) (Schatzberg 2003)
10Demonstrating Self Management Strategies Requires
the Ability to
- Display responsible personal behaviors.
- Display responsible work behaviors and time
management effectively. - Display the ability to solve problems effectively
and creatively. - Display an ability to make decisions when
necessary.
www.ed.psu.edu 2004
11Teaming and Soft Skills in a Capstone CIS Course
with Robust and Challenging Learning Outcomes
Teaming
Present ing
Tactical Data Collection Interview
Strategic Data Collection Interview
Presenting the Proposal
Presenting the Design Spec
12Continued
- Teaming builds both leadership skills and ability
to listen and follow the leadership of others (US
Dept of Labor, 2004) - Encourage students to get involved in campus
student groups or associations that enable to
hone teaming skills. - Capstone experience enables students to further
develop soft skills by involvement in a contrived
CASE study requiring deliverables from each
project phase.
13A Model IS Capstone Systems Development Course
Addressing the Soft Skills
- Course designed using the IS Model Curriculum IS
2002-10 course. - Covers the management of the entire project life
cycle. - Systems Requirements
- Business Modeling
- System Design
- Implementation
- System and Database Integration.
- Project Tracking and Staffing.
2002 IS Model Curriculum Davis et.al. 2002
14IS 2002 IS Model Curriculum Supports Soft Skills
in IS 2002 -10
- IS professionals must have a broad business and
real world perspective (see Tastle and Dumdum
2000). - IS professionals must have strong analytical and
critical thinking skills. - IS professionals must have strong interpersonal
communication and team skills. Students must
understand that - IS requires successful collaboration as well as
successful individual efforts. - IS design and management demands excellent
communication (oral, written, and listening)
skills. - IS requires curiosity, creativity, risk taking,
and a tolerance of these abilities in others.
2002 IS Model Curriculum Davis et.al. 2002
15The Course ObjectivesThe Authors Class
- Complete a series of class diagrams and "use
case" diagrams for an understanding of the
object-oriented analysis paradigm and a series of
ERDs and DFDs for a deeper understanding of
structured analysis. - Conduct "mock" data collection interviews
(O'brien 2003) based on the semester project
narrative. - Participate as a team member in a semester
project. - Complete a feasibility analysis and report. This
will also include a payback analysis. - Complete the ERD for the semester projects
business narrative using the selected CASE tool
for the semester. - Complete the Decomposition Diagram and Data Flow
Diagrams for the business narrative using the
selected CASE tool.
CIS 4600 Advanced Systems Development,
Northwestern State University
16Objectives Continued
- Compose and present the proposal to perform
systems design. - Design the business system. The deliverables
will include graphical user interface design,
navigation design, database design and program
design. - Present the System Specification to the class.
- Develop the code for the program design using an
acceptable development platform (VB.Net, VB 6.0,
C, JAVA, COBOL or Oracle Developer, for
example). - Demonstrate the system functionality as in a
presentation format.
CIS 4600 Advanced Systems Development,
Northwestern State University
17Behavioral Outcomes
- Confidence in speaking before a group.
- An ability to exercise diplomacy during the
interview process by being aware of positive body
language (eye contact, smile, facial nod, and
hand gesture), positive choice of power words and
positive speaking mannerisms. - The ability to introduce others properly with
sound body language and to convey the purpose of
the meeting/interview session succinctly. - The ability to ask open-ended, closed-ended and
probing questions that enhance effective data
gathering while maintaining positive rapport with
the user.
CIS 4600 Advanced Systems Development,
Northwestern State University
18Course Syllabus
19Behavioral Outcomes Continued
- The ability to work and cooperate effectively
with others by learning to appreciate the ideas
of others and to respect the opinion of others. - The ability to listen more effectively as well as
exhibit or reflect these listening skills through
proper listening body language and listening
gestures. - The ability to help organize a project.
- The ability to resolve conflict with others by
negotiation techniques and patience.
CIS 4600 Advanced Systems Development,
Northwestern State University
20 The Data Collection Interview and Team Role
Playing
- Student teams are required to respond to the user
request by conducting 2 data collection
interviews. - First interview is a mock strategic interview
with high to mid-level management (role played by
student team members also). - Team members switch hats and play the other role
of analyst or management. - Interviews are filmed.
CIS 4600 Advanced Systems Development,
Northwestern State University
21Student Interview
22(No Transcript)
23Teams Develop a Systems Proposal and Make
Presentation
- Teams develop a systems requirements statement.
- Teams write a systems proposal document. This
document must follow the Chicago Style format.
It must be well written. Students will be
penalized for typos, structural or organizational
problems and grammatical errors. - Teams prepare a Powerpoint presentation for the
proposal. - Students practice and present the stand-up
proposal to the class.
CIS 4600 Advanced Systems Development,
Northwestern State University
24Proposal
25Evaluation of Proposal
26Group Evaluation of Proposal
27The Required Deliverables of Each Team
- Strategic Interview Report
- Feasibility Analysis Report and Project Work Plan
- Tactical Interview Report
- Requirements Statement
- Business Model (data model and process model OR
UML model) - General GUI design prototypes
CIS 4600 Advanced Systems Development,
Northwestern State University
28Students Must Present the System Specification
- Interface design
- DBMS design
- Program design (structure charts, action
diagrams, pseudo code or flowcharts)
CIS 4600 Advanced Systems Development,
Northwestern State University
29Team Presentations Outline
- Interviews I and II (Both Strategic and Tactical)
- Properly introduce oneself to management.
- Adequately and succinctly describe the purpose of
the interview. - Briefly describe the user request.
- Gain an understanding of the true nature of
existing problems of the current business system
by using a structured interview technique.
CIS 4600 Advanced Systems Development,
Northwestern State University
30Systems Proposal
- Feasibility Analysis and Work Plan (Realistically
would have been done prior to this presentation
but included because of time constraints). - Systems Requirements presented.
- Review of business model.
- Initial interface prototype
CIS 4600 Advanced Systems Development,
Northwestern State University
31Final Project Presentation
- Systems specification review of systems design
(complete interface design, database design and
program design). - Final demo of subprogram functionality such as
"Take Order" or "Take Rental." The key point is
that it must be a central activity within the
business system, and must be a significant and
non-trivial programming activity.
CIS 4600 Advanced Systems Development,
Northwestern State University
32The Process of Forming Teams
- A pool of team leaders is elected by the class at
large. If a class requires 5 teams, then 5
leaders are chosen. - Each student is asked to submit a professional
resume. This resume is to replicate a job
resume. - The team leaders, with the instructor, will
review each student resume. - Each team leader will be allowed to select a team
member in a round robin process. Once all team
leaders have chosen one team member from the
resumes remaining then the process starts over
with each team leader choosing a second team
member and subsequently a third team member.
CIS 4600 Advanced Systems Development,
Northwestern State University
33An Alternative Team Selection Process
- Team leaders interview the remaining students in
the class. - Team leaders rank interviewees from 5 (highest)
to 1 (lowest). - The number of 5 scores given out must not be
greater than the number of possible teams. For
example, a class of 20 with an average team size
of 4 would allow only 5 students receive a score
of 5. - The number of interviewees with a score of 4
would also not exceed the number of teams and so
forth.
34Continued
- Team leaders will assign at least one five, one
four, one three etc to each team. - Teacher encourages team leader to evaluate team
members so that a diversely talented team is
formed. - Team leaders should possess motivational and
organizational skills. - Each team should have a synthesizer/analyzer
along with an implementor.
(Cougar, 1983)
35Selecting a Team Leader
- Teacher interviews students who are interested in
being the team leader. - Offers a bonus package for playing the role of
team leader. - Teacher selects the team leader based on their
ability to motivate, lead and organize and who
have a well rounded academic record.
36Evaluating the Teams and Individuals
- Students receives an individual performance
grade along with a team performance grade for
each phase of the project. An arithmetic average
score is derived from the two. - Students receives a peer performance evaluation
from each of their team members. A numeric score
is derived from the Likert score A(from 4.5 to
5) B(from 4.0 to 4.4) etc. - The peer evaluation counts for 10 of the
students over-all grade.
37Peer Evaluation Page 1
38Peer Evaluation Page 2
39Peer Evaluation Page 3
40Conclusion
- The authors propose that greater emphasis be
placed on soft skill learning experiences within
the IS curriculum. - Best to incorporate these experiences throughout
the course structure. - Recommend the inclusion of a capstone course that
emphasizes the soft skills. - Require students to perform an interview.
- Require students to perform an in class
presentation (possibly a feasibility analysis or
a system proposal..or both). - Require students to submit a formal written
proposal free of grammatical errors, typos, etc.
41Conclusion -- continued
- Teacher should hold meetings with teams when
there is conflict. Teachers should help the team
work through the process of resolving the
conflict, but do not fix the problem for them.
42Times up
43Questions?