Exploring Disparities in Student and Practitioner Perceptions of Skill Proficiency with SE Gap Awareness

Software engineering (SE) is constantly changing and evolving, increasing the gaps in knowledge and skills that students need to become productive software engineers in industry. To address the gaps in SE education, this paper introduces SE Gap Awareness– an online platform to increase awareness of gaps from industry professionals using gamification and provide resources to help users improve on SE skills. We conducted a preliminary evaluation by engaging with practitioners to identify gaps they perceive in SE education and perform a user study to students’ self-assessment of gaps and usage of our system. Our findings show students rank their skills higher than practitioners in soft, hard, and coding skills, and found SE Gap Awareness useful for increasing awareness of gaps and exploring resources concerning deficient skills. Based on our initial tool and evaluation, we provide implications for future systems to mitigate gaps in SE education.