Coaching professional software developers - an experience report

Model-driven development, using UML, has become the most dominant development paradigm, in software industry. To be correctly and efficiently applied, systematic teaching and learning are key prerequisites for benefiting from new technologies. This is especially true for an industrial setting since traditional classroom training approaches are often not applicable due to time and cost reasons, which, in turn, led to the development of e-learning and blended learning approaches. Based on numerous applications of our modular blended learning approach for teaching object-oriented software development with UML [1] an attempt has been made to improve the design, the organization and the execution of the blended learning arrangement. Therefore, we collected data on the learning environment, the learners´ behavior and preferences. The results from the questioning in an industrial setting, although far from being representative because of the small number of respondents, give some interesting insights in the needs and expectations of learners and the usage of different elements of blended learning arrangements which could serve as hypotheses for later in depth studies. One of these hypotheses is, that coaching may serve very well the explored learning needs and preferences and makes training programs effective and sustainable.