Work in progress — Transversal competencies contributions to Computer Science 1 course

A competence may be generically defined as the capacity of doing something and is more than just skills or knowledge. A transversal competence is one which can be re-used when shifting to another context. Our goal is to contribute to improve Computer Science 1 (CS1) course´s results by the systematic incorporation of activities based on transversal competencies. We designed a set of activities to enhance the development of transversal competencies, specially planning and time management, team work and communication skills. Hypothetically, we propose that including this kind of activities helps to obtain better results in the course. An initial experimentation was done in 2010. The preliminary results show a remarkable positive difference in student´s results. In the selected group the fail rate was only 12% (3 of 25 students). In other groups, the fail rate was 32% (8 of 25 students) and 40% (8 of 20 students). In previous years, this rate was approximately 40%.