A Study of Dispositions According to the IEEE Information Technology Curricula 2017 for German Industry and Student Population

The modern Computer Scientist has a set of desired skills and knowledge. Lately it has been recognized that there is a third dimension that ACM and IEEE call ”Disposition”. These are personal qualities (socio-emotional skills, behaviors, attitudes) associated with success in college and career and they should be listed as learning outcomes in modern curriculum design. In this paper we want to find out how far students gain the most important skills and dispositions in their studies. As a first step, local industry was asked which skills they think a Bachelor student needs in their daily work in order to determine the most important skills or dispositions. Subsequently, a survey was conducted that was based on these results in order to obtain students' viewpoints, including information on a specific course. They were asked to rank the skills from their point of view. In addition, they were specifically asked to comment on where they acquired the most important skills according to our industry ranking. Results show that the ranking differs from the one presented in the IEEE report both for industry and student responses. While industry and students agree mostly on the ranking, students report that the training of such skills is missing in industry but even more so at University.