TH09: Team Composition Strategies and their effects

Speaker: Dr Cristina Alexandru

Title: Effects of team composition in strategies for developing our students' teamwork skills for the industry: lessons learned from an introductory Software Engineering course

Abstract: Over the past few years, I have been trialling different approaches to group assignments and teamwork support in my In2-SEPP (Informatics 2- Software Engineering and Professional Practice) undergraduate second year course. These were primarily meant to develop my students' teamwork skills, and thus prepare them for internships and later positions in the software development industry, where being able to work in a team has become essential. However, as opposed to industry employees, our students are less mature, less organised, and their motivation and aspirations vary widely. Therefore, I needed to place a lot of focus on issues such as marking fairness and overall student experience. In the past, groups were selected using student preferences and random allocation, but neither of these approaches are desirable or offer all students equal chances for success in the course. Therefore, following advice from colleagues and the literature, this year I trialled engineering groups based on their members' past results in core courses, genders and nationalities. This resulted in some unexpected outcomes. In this talk, I will present my approaches to group assignments and teamwork support, before proceeding to a discussion about this year's outcomes and lessons learned.