Dealing with Uncertainty – Experiencing Real Life in Class

Abstract

[EN] It is likely that our Computer Science graduates will be confronted with software which has been growing over a long period of time. In order to master resulting challenges in their later professional lives, students need to be able to deal with the inherent uncertainty of legacy software systems. Observations show that many students are bad at dealing with uncertainty. Therefore, it is important to address the competence of dealing with uncertainty in teaching. In this article, we describe our experiences with addressing this important competence in teaching of a module on Software Archaeology. The basis is to establish a teaching and learning environment that creates uncertainty within lab sessions. We achieved this by using a project from industrial practice. This, however, also induces uncertainties regarding the teaching and assessment processes. We conclude that further methods need to be developed to address this competence with respect to teaching and assessment.