Evaluation of team dynamic in Norwegian projects for IT students
This research addresses challenges in teaching realistic software development and teamwork in project courses for IT students, but it is incremental as it builds on existing educational practices without introducing new methods.
The study investigated team dynamics in Norwegian IT student projects, finding that leadership perceptions differ by gender and that assigned leadership is suboptimal for learning, while students need support in task assignment and benefit from fine-grained task management and open discussions for decision-making.
The need for teaching realistic software development in project courses has increased in a global scale. It has always been challenges in cooperating fast-changing software technologies, development methodologies and teamwork. Moreover, such project courses need to be designed in the connection to existing theoretical courses. We performed a large-scale research on student performance in Software Engineering projects in Norwegian universities. This paper investigates four aspects of team dynamics, which are team reflection, leadership, decision making and task assignment in order to improve student learning. Data was collected from student projects in 4 years at two universities. We found that some leader's characteristics are perceived differently for female and male leaders, including the perception of leaders as skilful workers or visionaries. Leadership is still a challenging aspect to teach, and assigned leadership is probably not the best way to learn. Students is are performing well in task review, however, needs support while performing task assignment. The result also suggests that task management to be done in more fine-grained levels. It is also important to maintain an open and active discussion to facilitate effective group decision makings.