Evaluation of team dynamic in Norwegian projects for IT students

TL;DR

This study analyzes team dynamics in Norwegian IT student projects, highlighting gender differences in leadership perception, challenges in teaching leadership, and the importance of detailed task management and open discussions for effective teamwork.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights into team reflection, leadership, decision making, and task assignment in student software projects, emphasizing gender perceptions and teaching challenges.

Findings

Gender influences perception of leaders as skillful or visionary.

Leadership remains difficult to teach effectively.

Detailed task management and open discussions improve team decision making.

Abstract

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.