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Enhancing Software Engineering Group Projects Through Virtual Collaboration Tools

Learn about the experience of utilizing advanced groupware in both distributed and collocated student projects for software engineering at Durham University. Explore the objectives, infrastructure, lessons learned, and future directions of the "Developing a Virtual Community for Student Groupwork" project, along with pilot case studies and key lessons gleaned from student projects. Discover the benefits and challenges of using Shared Environment Groupware (SEG) and the Basic Support for Cooperative Work system (BSCW), including insights on performance, motivation, and future enhancements.

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Enhancing Software Engineering Group Projects Through Virtual Collaboration Tools

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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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