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Well‐developed programming (technical) skills are very important for software engineers, information systems engineers and programmers in general. However, they must also possess relevant personal skills (soft skills) to be successful at the workplace (eg, collaboration, solving real‐world problems and communication). The latter, however, are rarely assessed and acknowledged in regular software engineering courses. This paper describes the results of a small case study involving an extracurricular Java programming course in which, in addition to knowledge and skills in relevant technologies, students' soft skills were also assessed. As part of the assessment, students have been awarded Open Badges. The study was exploratory in nature, aimed at examining Open Badges as a motivational mechanism, students' engagement in attaining soft skills and students' perception of soft skills and Open Badges. The results suggest that Open Badges may not be so effective in motivating students to complete the assignments nor attend the course, although students' perception of Open Badges is generally positive. Soft skills were generally perceived as important as hard skills. Students' engagement in attaining soft skills could be affected by assignment announcement time and its level of difficulty.

In June 2009, the 5-year multi-national project EURANOS, funded by the EuropeanCommission in its 6th Framework Programme, reached its end, achieving most of the objectives addressed in the work programme. Partners from 23 European countries integrating 17 national emergency management organisations with 33 research institutes, aimed to enhance the preparedness for Europe's response to any radiation emergency and long term contamination. Three handbooks to assist national and local authorities in the management of contaminated food production systems, inhabited areas and contaminated drinking water resources in Europe were developed in conjunction with a wide range of European stakeholders. Further guidance was prepared to support the decision making team in the lifting of early phase countermeasures. A governance framework for the sustainable rehabilitation of long term contaminated territories was developed and tested in France and in Norway. Considerable progress was made in developing a consistent set of models for calculating the best estimate of the current radiological situation in both contaminated agricultural and inhabited areas. These models were integrated in both the ARGOS and the RODOS decision support systems. Decision aiding components were improved to support the selection of management options with the help of multi criteria decision analysis procedures. A mass consistent wind field model was implemented together with a particle model for complex terrain. The migration of RODOS (Real-time Online Decision Support System) to the operating system LINUX was completed. RODOS was completely re-engineered, taking into account the users' recommendations from the demonstration projects and feedback from its operational use. This new version will build the kernel for the operational RODOS release in 2010 and new research activities related to the future improvement of RODOS.