Managing Diversity in Distributed Software Development Education—A Longitudinal Case Study

Abstract

Teaching Distributed Software Development with real distributed settings is a challenging and rewarding task. Distributed courses are idiosyncratically more challenging than standard local courses. We have experienced this during our distributed course, which has been run for 14 consecutive years. In this article, we present and analyze the emerging diversities specific to distributed project-based courses. We base our arguments on our experience, and we exploit a three-layered distributed course model, which we use to analyze several course elements throughout the 14-years lifetime of our distributed project-based course. In particular, we focus on the changes that the course underwent throughout the years, combining findings obtained from the analyzed data with our own teaching perceptions. Additionally, we propose insights on how to manage the various diversity aspects. CCS Concepts: • Social and professional topics → Software engineering education;• Applied computing → Collaborative learning;•Software and its engineering → Software development methods;

Teaching Distributed Requirements Engineering: Simulation of an Offshoring Project with Geographically Separated Teams

“…Second, instructors need to be prepared to find flexible solutions to unforeseen problems, as recommended by Bosnić et al, [9]. The extreme numerical disparity between group sizes experienced in this case study (4 students in Japan, 28 in Germany) was solved by assigning the role of the requirements engineers to the group in Japan and splitting the German participants into four competing groups to develop alternative prototypes.…”

“…This underlines the importance of teaching students to work in crosssite teams. Further research by Bosnić et al, [9] analyzed the impact of diversity on three aspects of distributed course organization: institutions, teaching and projects. They recommend MoUs (Memorandum of Understanding) to develop a common baseline to deal with institutional differences, such as number of credit points, grading, etc.…”

“…Due to university enrollment procedures, the instructors only found out about this extreme numerical disparity one week before classes were scheduled to start. This situation reflects the problem of disproportionate group sizes as described in [9]. Due to these highly imbalanced numbers of students from each university, the instructors decided to assign the role of requirements engineering to the team in Japan (four members) and the role of offshoring development to the teams in Germany (four teams with seven members each), similar to [6].…”

Student Perception of Software Engineering Factors Supported by Machine Learning

“…Research on intercultural communication and collaboration in software development often focuses on global software engineering and distributed teams [15], [16]. Many of the struggles could also be observed in a local development team with members from different cultures, such as language barriers, work and communication styles, and overestimating software tools for communication and development [17].…”

Balanced, Unbalances, and One-Sided Distributed Teams - An Empirical View on Global Software Engineering Education

“…One factor that can widely vary is the number of students enrolled on each side. While some aspects can be compensated, careful planning at the beginning of a project is necessary to ensure adequate learning outcomes [4], [5].…”