It's not only about technology, it's about people: interpersonal skills as a part of the IT education.

Proceedings of: Second World Summit on the Knowledge Society (WSKS 2009), Chania, Crete, Greece, September 16-18, 2009.The importance of what have been termed the "soft skills" for the professional development of IT professionals is beyond any doubt. Taking account of this circumstance, the objective of the current research may be phrased as two separate questions. In the first place, determining the importance which IT related degree students place on these types of competencies for their professional future. In the second place, the importance which the development of the mentioned competencies has been given during their studies. The realization of an empirical study has fulfilled the two objectives described. The results demonstrate, on the one side, the moderate relevance which students assign to interpersonal competencies, especially emotional competencies, in contrast to the international curricular recommendations and studies concerning labor markets. On the other hand, the results indicate the scarce emphasis which lecturers have placed on the development of such competencies.Publicad

Gender sensitive design practices

Item does not contain fulltextTo what extent and in what ways do companies take gender into account in their design decisions? In the past, commerce has been criticized for designing for the dominant group in society—the notorious young, white, able-bodied, highly educated male—to the exclusion of user groups who do not fit these criteria. It has been argued that by designing for everybody, designers in fact unconsciously follow the male norm in society. The question of this article is the following: Which dominant design methodologies can be found in practice when designers make products aimed to include women? The ways in which gender gets drawn into the design process for a large diversity of ICT products will be reviewed, such as for games, Web sites, mobile phones, and computer parties