Holistic approach in education - filling the gap between different disciplines

Abstract

In the research, education and in everyday practice, a need for and general understanding and a holistic approach is becoming more and more important. Still in concrete cases such approaches meet many challenges, mostly in form of misunderstanding between involved partners experts from different disciplines. Education in general does not provide training for such approach. This paper describes a case - a course which goal was to transfer knowledge from one area to another: A software engineering and management of software development projects was taught to students of management and economy. In addition to this the course provided new teaching methods that students were not used to. Finally the course has been taught as a distance course, using Internet-based technology. All this elements made the course very challenging. The paper gives an overview of the case, identifies the challenges and discusses the lessons learned.