We developed a self-assessment tool for computing students in higher education to measure their Creative Problem Solving skills. Our survey encompasses 7 dimensions of creativity, based on existing validated scales and conducted focus groups. These are: technical knowledge, communication, constraints, critical thinking, curiosity, creative state of mind, and creative techniques. Principal axis factor analysis groups the dimensions into three overarching constructs: ability, mindset, and interaction. The results of a pilot study (n = 269) provide evidence for its psychometric qualities, making it a useful instrument for educational researchers to investigate students' creative skills.

Previous studies investigating and identifying non-technical skills of computing show that creative skills play an important role in tackling difficult programming problems. In the field of cognitive psychology, creativity has been extensively researched, and many of these methods can be adapted for application in computing education. We conducted a systematic literature review to support research on creativity in computing education by summarizing relevant theories, instruments, and other prior work. The review encompasses all SIGCSE venues and major journals in the field, providing a perspective of the current landscape on teaching and assessing creativity, in the context of computing in higher education. We identify which papers explore creativity as a central theoretical basis, revealing eight major themes. We also found seven commonly used measurement instruments. Creativity theories that are notably absent are also discussed, as are pedagogical implications of the approaches to fostering creativity in computing education. This paper serves to support the community by highlighting the interdisciplinary aspects of creativity research applicable in computing contexts. Additionally, it provides practical guidance and implications for educators in leveraging creativity in the classroom.

Research on global competencies of computing students suggests that next to technical programming knowledge, the teaching of non-technical skills such as creativity is becoming very relevant. Many CS1 courses introduce a layer of creative freedom by employing open project assignments. We are interested in the quality of the submitted projects in relation to the creativity that students show when tackling these open assignments. We have analyzed 110 projects from two academic years to investigate whether there is a relation between creativity and clean code in CS1 student projects. Seven judges were recruited that evaluated the creativity based on Amabile's Consensual Assessment Technique, while the PMD tool was used to explore code quality issues in the Java projects. Results indicate that the more projects are deemed as creative, the more likely code quality issues arise in these projects, and thus the less clean the code will be. We argue that next to promoting creativity in order to solve programming problems, the necessary attention should also be given to the clean code principles.

As the importance of non-technical skills in the software engineering industry increases, the skill sets of graduates match less and less with industry expectations. A growing body of research exists that attempts to identify this skill gap. However, only few so far explicitly compare opinions of the industry with what is currently being taught in academia. By aggregating data from three previous works, we identify the three biggest non-technical skill gaps between industry and academia for the field of software engineering: devoting oneself to continuous learning , being creative by approaching a problem from different angles , and thinking in a solution-oriented way by favoring outcome over ego . Eight follow-up interviews were conducted to further explore how the industry perceives these skill gaps, yielding 26 sub-themes grouped into six bigger themes: stimulating continuous learning , stimulating creativity , creative techniques , addressing the gap in education , skill requirements in industry , and the industry selection process . With this work, we hope to inspire educators to give the necessary attention to the uncovered skills, further mitigating the gap between the industry and the academic world.

Software development is a field riddled with complexity, constant change, and above all: technicality. Therefore, much research is devoted to these technical aspects (e.g. cognition), while non-technical skills (e.g. creativity) are given less attention. Our recent work has shown that expert software engineers in industry deem creativity as a crucially important problem solving skill. Yet, we also found that creativity is mentioned in less than 5% of the learning outcomes in computing-related courses across European universities. This denotes a clear gap in skill requirements between education and industry. Our aim is to explore the role of creativity in software engineering, investigating ways to assess and ultimately enhance the creative problem solving skills of computing students in higher education.

Industry expectations of graduates are higher than ever. Not only are they required to be skilled in several technologies, but also need to be equipped with non-technical skills - often called soft skills or professional skills. This puts pressure on computing programs, as educators try to integrate these requirements into already full curricula. Although incorporating such skills into programs is seemingly common practice, little is known about what skills are being taught and why, outside of isolated case studies. In this work we ask: What non-technical skills are expected of undergraduate students according to computing programs? To answer this we manually curated 278 non-technical syllabi from 110 universities in 30 European countries. The most frequently identified skills are teamwork, ethics, written/oral communication, and presentation skills, while the development of one's own values, motivating others, creativity, and empathy feature least frequently. By providing a detailed analysis and an interactive website visualizing this data, we hope to aid the community in reviewing which non-technical skills are taught with an aim to teaching the right skills to the right students. This work sheds new light on what is expected of undergraduate computing students in terms of non-technical skills and identifies areas where more coverage might be needed.

Numerous studies have shown that Game-Based Learning positively impacts educational effectiveness and student motivation. However, according to Amabile's Componential Model of Creativity, motivation is only one aspect of creativity, next to expertise and creative skills. Therefore, we looked beyond motivational aspects in order to amplify all dimensions of creativity. In a 'Software Design in C++' course at our local faculty of Engineering Technology, students learn to apply high-level object-oriented software development techniques on low-level embedded hardware. By introducing the Game Boy Advance (GBA), a 32-bit handheld released by Nintendo in 2001, students not only need the domain-specific technical expertise and motivation to succeed, but also the right creative skills to cope with the limitations of this embedded system that has only 96kb of VRAM. We focused the labs on stimulating these creative problem-solving techniques. Results are promising: students were highly motivated and creative output was distinctly increased; but technical expertise was still lacking during examination. Further work involves investigating the impact of peer-assessment on all aspects of creativity.

Important building blocks of software engineering concepts are without a doubt technical. During the last decade, research and practical interest for non-technicalities has grown, revealing the building blocks to be various skills and abilities beside pure technical knowledge. Multiple attempts to categorise these blocks have been made, but so far little international studies have been performed that identify skills by asking experts from both the industrial and academic world: which abilities are needed for a developer to excel in the software engineering industry? To answer this question, we performed a Delphi study, inviting 36 experts from 11 different countries world-wide, affiliated with 21 internationally renowned institutions. This study presents the 55 identified and ranked skills as classified in four major areas: communicative skills (empathy, actively listening, etc.), collaborative skills (sharing responsibility, learning from each other, etc.), problem solving skills (verifying assumptions, solution-oriented thinking, etc.), and personal skills (curiosity, being open to ideas, etc.), of which a comparison has been made between opinions of technical experts, business experts, and academics. We hope this work inspires educators and practitioners to adjust their training programs, mitigating the gap between the industry and the academic world.

A DC/DC converter with integrated digital controller and switches is realized. This DC/DC converter only needs an external coil, diode and capacitor. The main advantages of this type of digital DC/DC converter are the fast response on load variation and the high efficiency over a wide power range. The DC/DC converter uses low resistance CMOS switches and operates in multi mode. The controller uses a small output voltage window as reference for control actions.