TY - GEN
T1 - Challenges and recommendations for the design and conduct of global software engineering courses
T2 - 2015 Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education Conference, ITiCSE-WGP 2015
AU - Clear, Tony
AU - Daniels, Mats
AU - Beecham, Sarah
AU - McDermott, Roger
AU - Barr, John
AU - Oudshoorn, Michael
AU - Savickaite, Airina
AU - Noll, John
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 ACM.
PY - 2015/7/4
Y1 - 2015/7/4
N2 - Context: Global Software Engineering (GSE) has become the predominant form of software development for global companies and has given rise to a demand for students trained in GSE. In response, universities are developing courses and curricula around GSE and researchers have begun to disseminate studies of these new approaches. Problem: GSE differs from most other computer science fields, however, in that practice is inseparable from theory. As a result, educators looking to create GSE courses face a daunting task: integrating global practice into the local classroom. Aim: This study aims to ameliorate the very difficult task of teaching GSE by delineating the challenges and providing some recommendations for overcoming them. Method: To meet our aims we pose two research questions ("When teaching GSE to students in Higher Education, what are the (a) challenges, and (b) recommendations for addressing them") and then conduct a systematic literature review (SLR) to determine the answers to these questions. Our SLR follows a carefully designed and validated protocol. Results: We found 82 papers that addressed our research questions. Our findings indicate that in addition to the challenges posed by GSE in general, particular problems arise in educational situations. The majority of these challenges fall into the "global distance" category, though teamwork challenges and people issues (such as trust) also commonly arise. Organizational differences between institutions, differing skill sets between students in different locations, and varying cultural work norms, for example, all operate within educational settings in quite different ways than in professional development teams. Integrating cultural training, conducting teamwork exercises to build trust, and instructor monitoring of team communication are all examples of techniques that have been used successfully by educators according to our review Conclusion: Despite the severity of the challenges in GSE education, many institutions have successfully developed courses and curricula targeting GSE. Indeed, for each of the challenges we have identified in the literature there are numerous recommendations for overcoming them. Instructors can use the recommendations given in this study as a starting point to running successful GSE courses.
AB - Context: Global Software Engineering (GSE) has become the predominant form of software development for global companies and has given rise to a demand for students trained in GSE. In response, universities are developing courses and curricula around GSE and researchers have begun to disseminate studies of these new approaches. Problem: GSE differs from most other computer science fields, however, in that practice is inseparable from theory. As a result, educators looking to create GSE courses face a daunting task: integrating global practice into the local classroom. Aim: This study aims to ameliorate the very difficult task of teaching GSE by delineating the challenges and providing some recommendations for overcoming them. Method: To meet our aims we pose two research questions ("When teaching GSE to students in Higher Education, what are the (a) challenges, and (b) recommendations for addressing them") and then conduct a systematic literature review (SLR) to determine the answers to these questions. Our SLR follows a carefully designed and validated protocol. Results: We found 82 papers that addressed our research questions. Our findings indicate that in addition to the challenges posed by GSE in general, particular problems arise in educational situations. The majority of these challenges fall into the "global distance" category, though teamwork challenges and people issues (such as trust) also commonly arise. Organizational differences between institutions, differing skill sets between students in different locations, and varying cultural work norms, for example, all operate within educational settings in quite different ways than in professional development teams. Integrating cultural training, conducting teamwork exercises to build trust, and instructor monitoring of team communication are all examples of techniques that have been used successfully by educators according to our review Conclusion: Despite the severity of the challenges in GSE education, many institutions have successfully developed courses and curricula targeting GSE. Indeed, for each of the challenges we have identified in the literature there are numerous recommendations for overcoming them. Instructors can use the recommendations given in this study as a starting point to running successful GSE courses.
KW - Capstone
KW - Global software development
KW - Global software engineering
KW - International collaboration
KW - Open ended group project
KW - Systematic literature review
KW - Teaching and learning
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84964794770&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/2858796.2858797
DO - 10.1145/2858796.2858797
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84964794770
T3 - ITiCSE-WGP 2015 - Proceedings of the 2015 ITiCSE Conference on Working Group Reports
SP - 1
EP - 39
BT - ITiCSE-WGP 2015 - Proceedings of the 2015 ITiCSE Conference on Working Group Reports
PB - Association for Computing Machinery, Inc
Y2 - 4 July 2015 through 8 July 2015
ER -