Integrated development of technical and base competencies: Fostering reflection skills in software engineers to be

The student entry phase is the period of a study process in which fundamental technical and non-technical skills should be acquired. The interrelation of those skills is not only crucial for the study process itself. Rather, the systematic, well-reflected methodological usage of specific technical knowledge is a key element for the future professional career after graduation. Unfortunately, during our last years of teaching we noticed that most of the novices in software engineering are neither well equipped with the necessary soft skills, nor can they handle the key technical skills in an appropriate way at the end of their first semester. Therefore, we designed a project that addresses technical and non-technical competencies in an integrated way. In the project, we induce students to actively increase their awareness of their own proficiency in technical and non-technical skills by guided reflection and feedback processes, both individually as well as in a group.