Systematic evolution of a learning setting for requirements engineering education based on competence-oriented didactics

Requirements engineering is widely accepted as a top success factor for IT (and non-IT) projects. Qualified requirements engineers need to possess not just factual knowledge, but also many skills. Yet, it is unclear which competences requirements engineers actually need, and how these competences may be addressed appropriately in education. As a methodological framework, we devised an approach, Competence-Oriented Didactics, which rests on a sound pedagogical underpinning. This paper shows how Competence-Oriented Didactics is applied to a requirements engineering course in several iterations. In contrast to more traditional teaching approaches, students shall not only acquire technical requirements engineering knowledge, but, at the same time, develop non-technical competences that are necessary for requirements engineering. In particular, students shall better understand why requirements engineering and its core methods, techniques, and skills are needed. Moreover, students shall develop and expand the necessary skills for requirements engineering. Consequently, learning shifted from an instructive to an active and inductive style, which makes students actively discover relevant requirements engineering issues and gain hands-on experiences through carefully devised exercises. Systematic evaluations indicate that the described didactical settings works well. This paper has two main contributions: first, a systematic, competence-driven approach to develop learning settings, and second, a learning setting that is equally directed towards technical and non-technical competences of requirements engineers and demonstrably achieves its goals.