A Validated Educational Format in Software Engineering Targeting Students' Collaboration Skills

In the context of the Bologna process the " shift from teaching to learning" is postulated to meet two central goals: To increase the students' employability and to foster needed competencies. To be in a position to process methods and find solutions for highly complex, abstract, large, and multilayered problems, a Software Engineer has to have a lot of subject knowledge and technical competencies; but above all, he/she has to be able to work in -at least one -team. For the purpose of preparing the students with professional knowhow and moreover with teamwork skills, the approach shown in this paper supplements an ex-cathedra teaching by a seminar and a project phase. This combination is dedicated to acquire theoretical knowledge in a collaborative and self-directed way. This is done in order to be able to deepen the learned matter, to share content through learning-by-teaching in groups and furthermore to apply the knowledge and skills in a simulated project, which constitutes a realistic situation and teamwork of an engineer as good as possible.