Exploring collaboration patterns among global software development teams.

This study examines communication behaviors in global software student teams. The authors of the paper characterize the types of communication behaviors that occur when student teams are engaged in a software development project. The authors present findings from a one-semester study that examined factors contributing to successful distributed programming interactions among students enrolled at the University of Atilim (Turkey), Universidad Tecnológica de Panamá, University of North Texas, and Middlesex University (UK). Using content and cluster analyses techniques, we identified distinct patterns of collaboration and examined how these patterns were associated with task, culture, GPA, and performance of collaborative teams. Our results suggest that communication patterns among global software learners may be related to task type, culture and GPA. It is hoped that these findings will lead to the development of new strategies for improving communication among global software teams

The role and effectiveness of e-learning: key issues in an industrial context

This paper identifies the current role and effectiveness of e-learning and its key issues in an industrial context. The first objective is to identify the role of e-learning, particularly in staff training and executive education, where e-learning (online, computer-based or videoconferencing learning) has made significant impacts and contributions to several organisations such as the Royal Bank of Scotland, Cisco and Cap Gemini Earnst Young. With e-learning, staff training and executive education provides more benefits and better efficiency than traditional means. The second objective of this research is to understand the effectiveness of e-learning. This can be classified into two key issues: (1) methods of e-learning implementations; and (2) factors influencing effective and ineffective e-learning implementations. One learning point from (1) is that centralized e-learning implementations may prevail for big organizations. How-ever, more organizations adopt decentralized e-learning implementations due to various reasons, which will be discussed in this paper. From the research results, a proposed way is to retain the decentralized way. The second learning point is about interactive learning (IL), the combination of both e-learning and face-to-face learning. IL has been making contributions to several organizations, including the increase in motivation, learning interests and also efficiency. The popular issues about IL are (a) how to minimize the disadvantages of IL and (b) the degree of interactivity for maximizing learning efficiency. One learning point from (2) is to analyze the factors influencing effective and ineffective implementations, which reflect the different focuses between industrialists and academics. In terms of effective e-learning implementations, factors identified by both groups can map to particular cases in industry. In contrast, factors causing ineffective implementations rely more on primary source data. In order to find out these factors and analyze the rationale behind, case studies and interviews were used as research methodology that matched the objective of the research

Evaluation of team dynamic in Norwegian projects for IT students

The need for teaching realistic software development in project courses has increased in a global scale. It has always been challenges in cooperating fast-changing software technologies, development methodologies and teamwork. Moreover, such project courses need to be designed in the connection to existing theoretical courses. We performed a large-scale research on student performance in Software Engineering projects in Norwegian universities. This paper investigates four aspects of team dynamics, which are team reflection, leadership, decision making and task assignment in order to improve student learning. Data was collected from student projects in 4 years at two universities. We found that some leader's characteristics are perceived differently for female and male leaders, including the perception of leaders as skilful workers or visionaries. Leadership is still a challenging aspect to teach, and assigned leadership is probably not the best way to learn. Students is are performing well in task review, however, needs support while performing task assignment. The result also suggests that task management to be done in more fine-grained levels. It is also important to maintain an open and active discussion to facilitate effective group decision makings

Sutton Coldfield College of Further Education: report from the Inspectorate (FEFC inspection report; 55/94 and 42/98)

The Further Education Funding Council has a legal duty to make sure further education in England is properly assessed. The FEFC’s inspectorate inspects and reports on each college of further education according to a four-year cycle. This record comprises the reports for periods 1993-94 and 1997-98

Emerging cad and bim trends in the aec education: An analysis from students\u27 perspective

As the construction industry is moving towards collaborative design and construction practices globally, training the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) students professionally related to CAD and BIM became a necessity rather than an option. The advancement in the industry has led to collaborative modelling environments, such as building information modelling (BIM), as an alternative to computer-aided design (CAD) drafting. Educators have shown interest in integrating BIM into the AEC curriculum, where teaching CAD and BIM simultaneously became a challenge due to the differences of two systems. One of the major challenges was to find the appropriate teaching techniques, as educators were unaware of the AEC students’ learning path in CAD and BIM. In order to make sure students learn and benefit from both CAD and BIM, the learning path should be revealed from students’ perspective. This paper summarizes the background and differences of CAD and BIM education, and how the transition from CAD to BIM can be achieved for collaborative working practices. The analysis was performed on freshman and junior level courses to learn the perception of students about CAD and BIM education. A dual-track survey was used to collect responses from AEC students in four consecutive years. The results showed that students prefer BIM to CAD in terms of the friendliness of the user-interface, help functions, and self-detection of mistakes. The survey also revealed that most of the students believed in the need for a BIM specialty course with Construction Management (CM), Structure, and Mechanical-Electrical-Plumbing (MEP) areas. The benefits and challenges of both CAD and BIM-based software from students’ perspectives helps to improve the learning outcomes of CAD/BIM courses to better help students in their learning process, and works as a guideline for educators on how to design and teach CAD/BIM courses simultaneously by considering the learning process and perspectives of students. © 2018 The autho