Enhancing the student learning experience in software engineering project courses

Abstract

Carrying out real-world software projects in their academic studies helps students to understand what they will face in industry, and to experience first-hand the challenges involved when working collaboratively. Most of the instructional strategies used to help students take advantage of these activities focus on supporting agile programming, which is appropriate for capstone courses. This is not always recommended in initial software engineering project courses, however, where novice developers run projects in teams while simultaneously taking other courses. To enhance the learning and teamwork experience in this latter instructional scenario, this paper proposes a formative monitoring method, reflexive weekly monitoring (RWM), for use in project courses that involve disciplined software processes and loosely coupled work. RWM uses self-reflection and collaborative learning practices to help students be aware of their individual and team performance. RWM was applied in a case study over nine consecutive semesters. The results obtained indicate that RWM was effective in enhancing the learning experience in the instructional scenario studied. While students in the monitored teams were more effective and coordinated, and experienced a higher sense of team belonging and satisfaction, little evidence was found of them being more productive than students working in non-monitored teams.