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Groupware to Support Distributed & Collocated Software Engineering Student Group Projects Sarah Drummond RISE Dept. Computer Science University of Durham. Presentation Overview . Distributed SE group project: Objectives of “Developing a Virtual Community for Student Groupwork”

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Presentation Overview

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  1. Groupware to Support Distributed & Collocated Software Engineering Student Group ProjectsSarah DrummondRISEDept. Computer ScienceUniversity of Durham

  2. Presentation Overview • Distributed SE group project: • Objectives of “Developing a Virtual Community for Student Groupwork” • Infrastructure: synchronous and asynchronous • Collocated group projects @ Durham • the use of BSCW • Lessons Learnt • Future direction

  3. Objectives of the JTAP project“Developing a Virtual Community for Student Groupwork” • to give students experience of working collaboratively in geographically distributed teams to carry out software engineering tasks using modern group-working technologies • to develop staff experience of operating distributed collaborative projects and to disseminate experience to enable such projects to be implemented successfully in other institutions

  4. Pilot case studies - phase 1 • evaluation of groupware • 12 groups of 3 students - video conferencing • 3 different software engineering tasks - 2hr each • questionnaires and observations Student projects - phase 2 • part of student final year projects; customer-defined • involved 7 weeks of collaboration, plus 2 face-to-face meetings • each project group to produce a database system specification, development and documentation • questionnaires and observations

  5. Lessons learned • the usability of the various technologies (video, audio, chat, white-board) assessed, and the applicability of each identified • tasks completed adequately • more training necessary • technology not robust enough (video conferencing) • distributed work • face-to-face meetings essential for success • need to establish protocols for distributed working • little groupware is available which specifically supports software engineering although general purpose support for group communication are effectively used for distributed working

  6. Software Engineering Group (SEG) projects at Durham • Development of software through the phases of the software lifecycle • 15 week duration • Approx. 84 students = 14 groups of 6 or 7 • One tutor/customer per group • Strict deadlines for group deliverables (all written in HTML) at each phase.

  7. SEG: Work so far... • Dedicated SEG collaborative working laboratory • Creation of a virtual environment for student group work “SEGWorld” based on BSCW (Basic Support for Cooperative Work) • On-line tutorials and course work materials

  8. What is BSCW? • A document storage and retrieval system supporting collaborative information retrieval therefore supporting the work of widely dispersed work-groups • Runs on UNIX (incl. Linux) and NT OS • Supports independent platforms via a WWW interface • Consists of a server which maintains index of all workspaces it manages.

  9. What is BSCW? (2) • Users access system using standard user-name/password and server responds with a list of workspaces the user can enter. Each workspace contains a number of shared objects • Actions can be performed on these objects by workspace members • Hierarchical file structure • A notification service keeps users aware of each others activities

  10. Summary of results • SEGWorld provides: • central repository • simple work-flow mechanism • awareness of other members activities • functionality to support some SE activities • practical experience of using groupware • Problems! • performance • initial motivation poor - lack of experience • inconsistent/non-use of functions

  11. Where to from here? • No distributed projects • Continued use of shared workspace • upgrade • performance issues addressed • Continued improvement in introduction of SEGWorld and associated tutorial • CGI scripts to semi-automate on-line marking • Introduction of CSCW module in curriculum

  12. Further information • SEG web pages: http://www.dur.ac.uk/~dcs8s00 • SEG publications: http://www.dur.ac.uk/~dcs1sad/papers • BSCW: http://bscw.gmd.de

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