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

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: Dec 19, 2019
• 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
• Contract Date: Jun 20, 2018