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Students as co-producers in a multidisciplinary software engineering project: addressing cultural distance and cross-cohort handover

Foster, David; Gilardi, Filippo; Martin, Paul; Song, Wei; Towey, Dave; White, Andrew

Authors

David Foster

Filippo Gilardi

Paul Martin

Wei Song

Dave Towey

Andrew White



Abstract

This article reports on an undergraduate software engineering project in which, over a period of two years, four student teams from different cohorts developed a note-taking app for four academic clients at the students’ own university. We investigated how projects involving internal clients can give students the benefits of engaging in real software development while also giving them experience of a student-staff collaboration that has its own benefits for students, academics, and the university more broadly. As the university involved is a Sino-Foreign university located in China, where most students are Chinese and most teaching staff are not, this ‘student as co-producer’ approach interacts with another feature of the project: cultural distance. Based on analysis of notes, reports, interviews, and focus groups, we recommend that students should be provided with communicative strategies for dealing with academics as clients; universities should develop policies on ownership of student-staff collaborations; and projects should include a formalised handover process. This article can serve as guidance for educators considering a ‘students as co-producers’ approach for software development projects.

Citation

Foster, D., Gilardi, F., Martin, P., Song, W., Towey, D., & White, A. (2018). Students as co-producers in a multidisciplinary software engineering project: addressing cultural distance and cross-cohort handover. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 24(7), 840-853. https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2018.1486295

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jun 1, 2018
Online Publication Date Jun 18, 2018
Publication Date Jun 18, 2018
Deposit Date Jun 20, 2018
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice
Print ISSN 1354-0602
Electronic ISSN 1470-1278
Publisher Routledge
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 24
Issue 7
Pages 840-853
DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2018.1486295
Keywords Students as co-producers; student projects; inter-cultural communication; multi-cultural education; multi-disciplinary projects; software engineering
Public URL https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/939484
Publisher URL https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13540602.2018.1486295
Additional Information This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice on 18 June 2018, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/13540602.2018.1486295

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