Video-based Training for Meeting Communication Skills

Background: Discussing and sharing information in development teams is part of any software project. Therefore, software engineers spend significant time in meetings with their team. Communicating effectively and efficiently in those meetings is essential. However, software engineers often do not possess the right skills. On the other hand, training face-to-face meeting communication skills in university settings is resource- and time-consuming. Aims: Our goal is to develop and evaluate a method to support the training of face-to-face meeting communication skills. Method: We develop a method based on active video-watching. Active video-watching supports deep learning by systematically engaging students with video-based learning material. We also implement this method in an online platform for classroom use. Furthermore, we empirically develop a new measurement instrument to assess face-to-face meeting communication skills. To evaluate the training method, we used it in three instances of a second-year software engineering project course. To assess learning gain, we assessed (a) the conceptual knowledge about face-to-face meeting communication, and (b) skills based on our newly developed measurement instrument, both before and after the training. Results: Both conceptual knowledge as well as skill measurement scores based on our instrument increased. Increases are statistically significant. Conclusions: We show the effectiveness of active video-watching for training face-to-face meeting communication skills, one specific soft skill relevant for software engineers. The measurement instrument that we developed can also be used as a stand-alone tool to assess skills of students and potentially practitioners.