Making Lab Sessions Mandatory -- On Student Work Distribution in a Gamified Project Course on Market-Driven Software Engineering

TL;DR

This study investigates the impact of mandatory lab sessions on work distribution in a gamified software engineering course, revealing that while well-received by experienced students, it did not improve fairness among novices.

Contribution

It introduces mandatory programming lab sessions as an intervention to address work imbalance in student teams, highlighting its limited effectiveness and varied student reception.

Findings

Mandatory labs did not change work distribution.

Experienced students appreciated the intervention.

Novice students found it unpopular.

Abstract

Unfair work distribution in student teams is a common issue in project-based learning. One contributing factor is that students are differently skilled developers. In a course with group work intertwining engineering and business aspects, we designed an intervention to help novice programmers, i.e., we introduced mandatory programming lab sessions. However, the intervention did not affect the work distribution, showing that more is needed to balance the workload. Contrary to our goal, the intervention was very well received among experienced students, but unpopular with students weak at programming.