Eunis 2014: Technology in Real-life Teaching of Distributed Software Development

Technology in Real-life Teaching of
Distributed Software Development
Ivana Bosnić University of Zagreb, Croatia
Mario Žagar
Ivica Crnković Mälardalen University, Sweden

Who are we?
3universities
University of Zagreb
FER
Zagreb, Croatia
Mälardalen University
MDH
Västerås, Sweden
Politecnico di Milano
POLIMI
Milano, Italy

Distributed Software Development?
 We use
 to teach
 and to prepare
students for

11years
~30 countries
~400students

Pedagogy? What’s in it for me?
 ADDIE model of instructional design
 Analysis
 Design
 Development
 Implementation
 Evaluation
 social constructivism

Taking care of the team...
 role-playing
 supervisor + customers
 Teaching Perspectives Inventory:
 nurturing type
 communication!

Educational goals - I
 obtaining basic
theoretical knowledge on DSD
 gathering experience
from industry professionals
 simulating the real-world environment
 working with external customers

Educational goals - II
 improving presentation skills
 transferring knowledge
among the students
 improving collaboration skills
and responsibility

Educational goals - III
 developing self-assessment abilities
 learning to peer-review

Technology in DSD
 not Yet Another LMS-based course
 virtual space for students and staff
 tools, technologies, approaches
 joint lectures
 collaborative software engineering
 communication
 delivering presentations and products
 feedback

Technology need - I
 Need:
 synchronous in-class communication
 Used for:
 audio and video conferences
 desktop sharing
 Tools used:
 Polycom, Skype
 NetMeeting
 Adobe Connect

Technology need - II
 Need:
 synchronous collaboration
 Used for:
 instant messaging
 Tools used:
 Skype
 MSN Messenger
 ICQ (yes, that’s old... DSD is old, too  )

Technology need - III
 Need:
 asynchronous collaboration
 Used for:
 sharing news, document collaboration
 polls and questionnaires, discussion groups
 Tools used:
 FER CMS,
 Google Groups, Google Docs, Google Poll
 Doodle

Technology need – IV
 Need:
 software development collaboration
 Used for:
 versioning system
 bug reporting software
 project managment
 Tools used:
 SVN, Git
 BugZilla, Redmine

Choosing a {tool, technology, approach...}
 stability, availability over the years?
 free / open source?
 students sometimes do know better!
 new experiences

What’s innovative here?
 just a few courses like this
 tightly-coupled connections
 both among students and staff
 real-life experience
 external customers
 student competitions

Students’ feedback
 initial questionnaire
 periodic polling – “How happy am I?”
 final questionnaire
 course evaluation

10years
15questions
264students

In general...
1. As a whole the course was: 4,38
2. The course has fulfilled my expectations: 4,16
Year 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 Avg
Students # 21 52 44 26 11 28 36 15 22 9 28,33
Statement 1 4,71 4,58 4,32 4,08 4,36 4,14 4,67 4,53 4,23 4,11 4,38
Statement 2 4,48 4,29 4,02 3,88 4,27 4,11 4,19 4,18 4,09 4,11 4,16

Some general comments...
 “This course was one of the best that I had on faculty.”
 “I was scared at the beginning, but now I feel lucky I
had been a part of this course.”
 “Another week and I would have died.”

... on technology ...
 “All the free technologies are enough this days to
work on such a project. Also, all the technology
on universities was great also, so we had no
major problems.”
 “the equipment in the lecture room was good,
and we did not have any communication problem
other than one lecture. Then the professors have
to deliver lectures seperately to both the
destinations.”

And some more to think about...
 “...I found out that it takes a lot of work to make
something work as you want it to work.”
 “When getting at the FER I thought that every
course will be like this. Soon I changed my mind
and thought that something like this exists only
in america. I'm very glad I found something like
this at FER.”

“It ain’t over... “
 “What can be improved in the course?”
 Students’ suggestions on:
 Technical resources
 Knowledge level
 Project selection and assignment
 Lectures, Course organization
 Workload, Course advising, Grading...
 Explaining why do we do what we do?
 Adapting the course 

Some e-learning awards & contest results
 not for self-praise 
but to emphasise the
motivation influence 

And now it’s over... Thanks!
www.fer.unizg.hr/rasip/dsd
ivana.bosnic@fer.hr
Twitter: @ivki

Eunis 2014: Technology in Real-life Teaching of Distributed Software Development

Eunis 2014: Technology in Real-life Teaching of Distributed Software Development

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Eunis 2014: Technology in Real-life Teaching of Distributed Software Development