Improvement of IT Students’ Communication Skills using Project
Based Learning
Chikako Morimoto
Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japany
Keywords: Communication Skills, Project Based Learning, Practical Education.
Abstract: It is well known that communication skills are important in business. In recent decades, diversity has been
becoming a big trend among Japanese companies. As a result, a high level of communication skills is
required of employees. The mainstream information technology (IT) industry is shifting focus from
software development to providing software “services.” IT companies need to communicate with their
clients to understand the clients’ IT strategies. However, typically, IT engineers are not seen as having good
communication skills. There is a similar impression of IT students. In this study, we compared
communication skills of IT students and non-IT students. Then, we compared communication skills of the
IT students before and after participating in project-based learning (PBL). As a result, we found that PBL is
effective in improving the communication skills of IT students.
1 INTRODUCTION
The information technology industry in Japan today
must pay attention to “communication skills” as
many companies in the IT industry are shifting focus
from development of software products to providing
software services. Japanese IT companies need to
communicate with their clients to understand the
clients’ IT strategies. Therefore, IT companies
require their IT engineers to have both IT skills and
human skills, which include high-level
communication skills. However, typically, IT
engineers are not seen as having good
communication skills. There is a similar impression
of IT students as well.
It is well known that communication skills are
important. In recent decades, as diversity has been
becoming a big trend among Japanese companies,
high-level communication skills are required of
employees. However, the meaning of
“communication skills” is different in each business
situation. As a result, we identified a need to analyze
the structure of communication skills and look for
ways to improve it.
In Japanese education, Project-Based Learning
(PBL) has attracted great attention. PBL is a
comprehensive approach to classroom teaching and
learning that is designed to engage students in the
investigation of authentic problems (Ayas and
Zeniuk, 2001). In this study, we made two
comparisons. One is the difference in
communication skills between IT students and non-
IT students. The other is the improvement of IT
students’ communication skills before and after the
application of PBL.
2 RELATED STUDY
This section explores the two topics important to our
study: PBL and communication skills.
2.1 PBL
The education method of PBL is increasingly being
used worldwide.
2.1.1 PBL in Engineering Education
In the 1950s, engineering education was “chalk and
talk,” in which a teacher lectured and students were
mostly passive listeners (Mills, Treagust, 2003). But
as the social environment became more complex and
diverse, engineering graduates were required to have
stronger communication and teamwork skills. To
address these types of requirements, new education
Morimoto, C.
Improvement of IT Students’ Communication Skills using Project Based Learning.
In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2016) - Volume 2, pages 147-152
ISBN: 978-989-758-179-3
Copyright
c
2016 by SCITEPRESS Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
147
methods were proposed as a solution in the U.S., the
UK, and Australia.
One curriculum was “problem-based” learning.
This method has been used for professional medical
training in the U.S. since the 1960s. In problem-
based learning, students learn how to cope with real
problems through structured presentation of problem
situations. This methodology has been extended to
engineering programs and has been seen as effective
in improving problem-solving and communication
skills. However, engineering students needed more
teamwork skills than medical students, and “project-
based” learning, emerged (Blumenfeld et al. 1991, S.
Bell 2010).
Heitmann described the difference between
problem-based learning and project-based learning
(Heitmann, 1996) as follows. He said that the
“project” is the engineer’s workplace. So, project-
based learning is a good fit to learning engineering
in a practical manner. Project-based learning can
include problem-based learning, and it may be
defined in various ways by different educational
disciplines and levels. Project-based learning has
become a major part of the engineering curriculum
(Mills, Treagust, 2003).
The “Capstone Education Program” (A J. Dutson
et al. 1997) is a famous style of problem-based and
project-based learning. It is an experiential learning
activity in which the analytical knowledge gained
from previous courses is joined with the practice of
engineering. It is a popular program in the U.S., and
there are many examples of the Capstone Program in
many universities. The distinguishing feature of
“Capstone education” is that it deals with social
issues. Companies and universities design a project
together and students learn to solve a problem
through a project.
2.1.2 PBL in Japanese IT Engineering
Education
For over 14 years, in Japan, companies have
identified communication skills as the most
important skill required of an individual to be hired
as a new employee. Engineering students are
graduating with good knowledge of fundamental
engineering science and computer literacy, but they
often do not know how to apply that in practice
because they lack experience in teamwork. With this
concern, PBL is increasing in Japan. For example,
the number of papers about PBL in Engineering
Education Magazine doubled to 22 items in 2014
from 10 in 2006.
The IT industry also requires strong
communication and teamwork skills. As one
solution, in 2006, the Ministry of Education, Culture,
Sports, Science and Technology in Japan (MEXT)
introduced a new IT training curriculum for graduate
schools’ computer science departments (MEXT
2005) to establish a nationwide practical education
network for IT human resources development. The
curriculum requires using “project-based learning.”
By using PBL, the IT industry expects IT students to
acquire both software development project
experience and communication skills.
2.2 Communication Skills
This section introduces communication skills.
2.2.1 Structure of Communication
The communication process has many sequential
steps: getting thoughts, encoding, sending, receiving,
decoding, and understanding (see Figure1). Each
step uses distinct skills, but generally, the term
“communication skills” is used.
Figure 1: Communication steps.
Katz said communication skills were important
for all managers including top executive and
foremen (Katz, 1955). His skill model is accepted
widely by Japanese business organizations;
however, he did not explain in detail what skills are
included in communication skills.
2.2.2 Index of Communication Skills
Fujimoto and Daibo investigated a factor pattern of
ENDCOREs (Fujimoto, Daibo, 2007), defining the
scale of communication skills. They examined
psychology students and found six categories of
factors: expressivity, assertiveness, deciphering
ability, other acceptance, self-control, and regulation
of interpersonal relationships. According to their
survey, Japanese students are better at “reaction
skills” than “expression skills.” However, these
indices did not test students in other majors.
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The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in
Japan (METI) has defined basic social skills. In
basic social skills, communication skills are not
clearly defined; communication skills are separated
into “general social skills,” “active speaking skills,”
“active listening skills,” and so on.
2.2.3 Research Question
Our research question was to determine whether
PBL is effective in improving communication skills
for IT students. We tried to determine the difference
in communication skills between IT students and
non-IT students. Then, we compared the effect of
PBL and other school activities on the students.
3 RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS
We used two questionnaires to gather our research.
3.1 Study 1: IT Students and Non-IT
Students
First, we compared the communication skills of the
IT students with those of the non-IT students using
paper questionnaires.
3.1.1 Research Outline
Our research outline was as follows:
We chose three groups to compare their project
experience and their communication skills.
Group A comprised our main research target. It
was composed of 29 IT students in a graduate
computer science course. All of them were male and
22–23 years old.
Group B was composed of 66 undergraduate
non-IT students who were learning project
management. In Group B, 7 students were female
and 59 were male, and they were 18–19 years old.
They had project experience.
Group C was also composed of 58 undergraduate
non-IT students, of which four students were female
and 54 were male. They were 18–19 years old. They
were studying finance and did not have project
experience.
Our questionnaires consisted of ENDCOREs and
the Basic Social Skills indicators. We chose 16
questions (Table 1 and Table 2). The attitude of
politeness is included in general skills.
We used anonymous questionnaires. The
questions were categorized into “importance” and
“execution.” The respondents were to indicate
whether they thought the skill or trait was important
and then also whether they thought that they
“executed” (personally possessed the skill or
portrayed the trait). Each question required ranking
the response from 1–5 with 5 being the highest and 1
being the lowest.
Table 1: The question category for research 1.
Question Category Number of question
General skill (G) 3
Deliver message (D) 3
Active listening (AL) 3
Polite leadership (P) 3
Assertiveness (AS) 4
Table 2: The questions.
** Question
G If I am having a trouble, I consult a friend.
G I gather everyone’s opinion during the discussion
and then I make a conclusion.
G I usually behave politely.
D When I talk with other people, I pay attention to
their level of understanding.
D Before I talk with them, I organize my thoughts
first.
D When I write to other people, I consider their
level of understanding.
AL In the conversation, I look at my partner's face or
eyes as much as possible.
AL In the conversation, I nod and react.
AL In the conversation, I confirm my understanding
by asking suitable questions.
P When there are different opinions, I listen to them
carefully and think how to convince them with
my opinion.
P When there are different opinions, I listen and
respect them.
P In front of many people, I can say my thoughts.
AS I can take the initiative of conversations.
AS Without being influenced by other opinions, I can
insist mine.
AS To lead the conversation, I can easily adjust to
others’ attitude.
AS I can insist logically and in a concreate way.
** Category
Because of the small sample size, we analysed
each group without dividing by gender and age
groups.
3.1.2 Result
In the three groups, there were slight differences.
There was no significant statistical difference, but
there was a difference in mean values. Group A said
that “deliver message” was the most important skill
Improvement of IT Students’ Communication Skills using Project Based Learning
149
and the next most important skills were “polite
leadership” and “assertiveness.” Group B identified
“polite leadership” and “assertiveness” as the most
important. Group C answered “general skills,”
“polite leadership,” and “assertiveness” as the most
important. Tables 3–5 show the answers as
“important,” “executed,” and “not executed.” An “x”
shows the category that they selected the most.
Table 3: The answer of each group (important).
Category
G D AL P AS
A x xx x x
B x x x
C x x x
Table 4: The answer of each group (executed).
Category
G D AL P AS
A x xx
B xx x xx
C x x x
Table 5: The answer of each group (not-executed).
Category
G D AL P AS
A * x xx x
B * xx x
C * xx xx
It seemed that Group A focused more on “deliver
message” than on “active listening,” while Group B
focused on “active listening.” All groups thought
that “polite leadership” and “assertiveness” were
important, but they did not execute these traits.
Group A answered that they did not feel free to
consult their friends, but Group B and Group C
answered that they could do it. Group A felt that it
was difficult to look into other people's eyes and to
understand their reactions. Group B and Group C
could look at others and could understand their
reactions easily.
3.1.3 Analysis
From each answer, it seemed that all groups thought
that a polite attitude was important, and they tried to
act politely. They said that it was difficult to show
assertiveness and take leadership. These are all
typical Japanese attitudes.
The biggest difference between the IT-students
(Group A) and the project management students
(Group B) was listening attitude. IT students seemed
to push their own thoughts and opinions, but project
management students listened to others’ thoughts
carefully. We think that is one reason why IT
students seem poor at communication.
3.2 Study 2: before and after PBL
In the second study, we compared the
communication skills of IT students before and after
administering a PBL program. We administered
PBL for a full year and the students could take the
PBL course voluntarily. It was also possible to retire
from PBL in the middle of the year.
3.2.1 Research Outline
We surveyed how much the IT students’
communication skills improved, using a
questionnaire before and after PBL. Our research
outline was as follows:
Our questionnaires consisted of the same
indicators used in Study 1: the ENDCOREs and the
Basic Social Skills indicators. The respondents were
24 graduate students in a computer science course.
All of them were male, 2223 years old and in the
first year of the master’s program. They were
surveyed in April 2014 and January 2015.
In our PBL program, the students developed the
Android mobile application software and server
application software using AWS and NEXUS7.
Each team consisted of 5–7 members. They started
PBL on April 2014 and ended in January 2015. The
aim of the PBL program was to learn software
development and learn project management through
trial and error. The PBL class met once a week for 3
hours per class. However, the students also needed
to work additional hours and plan their own team
schedule. Figure 2 shows their standard annual
schedule. Some of the students were good at Java
programing, and some of them were not. They
needed to take lessons in addition to the PBL class,
including an Android development class. It is
standard for master’s students in Japan to participate
in the seminar. They also participate in an internship
during summer vacation and do additional study for
their research.
We needed to compare before and after PBL, so
we used assigned questionnaires. We asked the same
questions from the standpoint of “importance” and
“execution.” Each question required different levels
with 4 being the highest and 1 being the lowest. In
addition, we asked for their opinion regarding the
effectiveness of PBL on a 5-level scale with 5 being
the highest and 1 being the lowest.
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Figure 2: A standard annual schedule of PBL.
3.2.2 Result
In this section, we explain the results. There was a
change in the skill level of the students’
communication skills before and after PBL.
Overall, “importance” received higher scores
than “execution.” The respondents seemed to
understand that communication skills are important,
but felt that they did not execute them enough. This
trend was the same both before and after PBL.
However, their communication skills scores
improved after PBL.
Table 6 shows the result of the question: “Do
you think that PBL was effective for your
communication skill improvement?” We saw that
74.8% students answered that PBL was effective in
improving their communication skills.
Table 6: Effectiveness of PBL.
In a free answer column, some students wrote
that they thought that PBL was very effective in
keeping up their motivation for learning and that it
was effective in improving their social skills. One
student said that he made some friends through PBL.
In the next step, we analyzed each category.
According to the category evaluation, the most
important skills before PBL was “deliver message”
and the least important skill was “active listening.”
At first, their interest lay in the output of their own
thoughts, but after PBL their interest changed.
After PBL, the score in all categories improved.
The most executed skill was “deliver message,” and
the most unexecuted skill was “polite leadership.”
Particularly, the improvement of “active listening”
was statistically significant. The other scores were
not statistically significant. Table 7 shows the
difference in the execution score before and after
PBL, and also shows the result of the T-test.
Table 7: The difference of execution.
We considered each question. Before PBL, the
respondents said that the following two statements
were the most important skills: “When I talk with
other people, I pay attention to their level of
understanding and “I gather everyone’s opinion
during the discussion, and then I make a conclusion.”
However, each respondent said that they did not
think they executed them enough. After PBL, all
skills improved. The improvements in these skills
were statistically significant in the T-test as follows:
If I am having a problem, I consult a
friend.”(p=0.035)
I gather everyone’s opinion during the
discussion, and then I make a conclusion.”(p=0.009)
When I talk with other people, I pay attention
to their level of understanding.”(p=0.004)
In the conversation, I confirm my
understanding by asking suitable
questions.”(p=0.005)
When there are different opinions, I listen to
them carefully and think how to convince them with
my opinion.”(p=0.000)
3.2.3 Analysis
PBL appeared to be effective in improving the
communication skills of IT students.
Their interest seemed to change from a focus on
the output of their thoughts to listening to others’
thoughts. These results were similar to the trend
among project management students in Study 1.
Earlier, they placed themselves in the center of
their communication. However, after PBL, they
placed others in the center of their communication.
We think this is a significant change.
4 CONCLUSIONS
In this study, we surveyed the communication skills
Ef f e ctivenessofPBL Answer
Stronglyagree 5
Agr ee 13
Soso 6
Notag r ee 0
Stronglynotag ree 0
Skill Bef ore After Ttest(p)
Generalskill 2.60 2.83 0.033795034
Delivermessage 2.76 3.04 0.018403696
Activelistening 2.65 3.03 0.00098705 *
Politelyleader s hip 2.51 2.74 0.065603211
Assertiveness 2.53 2.72 0.051826543
*>0.01
Improvement of IT Students’ Communication Skills using Project Based Learning
151
of graduate IT students. In the first study, we
compared the communication skills of IT students
and non-IT students. As a result, we found that the
project management students paid attention to others
in their communication. In addition, we found that
IT students were not good at listening to others.
They seemed to focus on output during
communication.
In the second study, we compared the
communication skills of IT students before and after
they participated in a PBL program.. As a result, we
found that PBL was effective in improving their
communication skills. Particularly, “active listening”
was improved.
We used self-questionnaires, and acknowledge
that it can be difficult for respondents to subjectively
judge their own communication skills. Also, besides
the PBL program, other factors could influence the
respondents, such as their seminars, internships, and
other school activities. However, we still think that
PBL is an effective training method to improve
communication skills.
IT students like to communicate using online
tools such as Twitter and Slack. But to improve their
communication skills, it is necessary for them to
communicate with other people directly. We think
that IT students can learn teamwork and interactive
communication with other people through PBL.
Our future plans for study are as follows: 1)
analyse the data in detail and 2) find exactly what
skills are improved most effectively using PBL.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research study received a grant from the
Nomura School of Advanced Management.
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