Developing 21st Century Skills with Project-Based Learning: An Experience Report in the Introductory Course of Software Engineering

In a Project-Based Learning (PBL) environment, students are assigned to work on challenging and complicated projects. This environment suites the setting of teaching software engineering courses. Since software engineering not only requires students to gain practical knowledge but they also need to develop soft skills. These soft skills such as communicating, collaborating, being creative, and critically thinking, are essential in the 21st-century working environment. However, these skills are hard to develop during the pandemic of Covid-19 due to social distancing measurement. This paper presents an experience report of using PBL in an online classroom. We have conducted the self-assessment, in which the student's feedbacks have been summarized into positive, negative, and suggestive responses. These responses indicate that students can gain fundamental knowledge and experience in using soft skills when they learn in the PBL environment. Among various soft skills, we have found that collaboration skill can be improved the most.