Software engineering education: A study on conducting collaborative senior project development

Project and teamwork training is recognized as an important aspect in software engineering (SE) education. Senior projects, which often feature industrial involvement, serve the function of a 'capstone course' in SE curricula, by offering comprehensive training in collaborative software development. Given the characteristics of student team projects and the social aspects of software development, instructional issues in such a course must include: how to encourage teamwork, how to formalize and streamline stakeholder participation, and how to monitor students' work, as well as sustain their desired collaborative effort throughout the development. In this paper, we present an exploratory study which highlights a particular case and introduces the meetings-flow approach. In order to investigate how this approach could contribute to the project's results, we examined its quantitative benefits in relation to the development of the project. We also conducted focus group interviews to discuss the humanistic findings and educational effects pertaining to this approach. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.