This research proposes to help students work more effectively in global software teams. The project will involve researchers from Turkey, Panama, and England along with industrial advisors from Travelocity and Lockheed and will focus on issues related to teaching undergraduate computer science students how to use computer-supported collaborative tools to work together to develop large software applications. Researchers will enhance a Web service infrastructure that can support collaborative software tools and use it in advanced programming courses offered at each of the four Universities. The courses will allow researchers to examine how 'distance' factors such as time, geography and culture affect globally distributed student learners. Data gathered from student interactions will then be used to create strategies that will improve collaboration among the culturally, spatially, and temporally dispersed learning teams. The result of this research will be a model and technology that will focus on the problems related to teaching global software development. These problems include teaching students how to use collaborative software, be members of a culturally diverse work team, manage time, organize ideas, and chat (communicate) with one another.
This project will examine ways to use technology to help students learn how to overcome barriers of time, space and culture. The proposed research represents an important contribution by teaching students how to work in culturally mixed dispersed teams. It will also contribute to practical knowledge about how to support distributed learning teams by determining which specific individual, spatial-temporal, and cultural factors are important and how they interact in the context of a computer supported collaborative environment. It will also test whether specific problems can be remediated through direct or indirect intervention, and whether these remediation strategies actually improve group performance. Although this study will occur in the context of a programming course, the results will have implications for geographically distributed collaborative learning teams in general. It should also have an effect on broadening the experiences of all students who participate in the study by exposing them to people from different cultures and nationalities
This multi-year project examined ways to improve global software learning teams. Students from the University of North Texas, Middlesex University, University of Atilim, Middle East Technical University, and Universidad Tecnológica de Panamá were teamed and asked to collaborate on a number of different software projects. The overall focus of the projects were to look at ways to increase the effectiveness of globally distributed learning teams, particularly student programming teams that were composed of individuals who have different cultures and live in different time zones. The specific tasks that were assigned to the students were intended to mimic the inherent Global Software Development (GSD) characteristics of geographical distance, different cultures, and different time zones. The major objective of these student assignments was to gain useful insight into the specific dynamics that affect distributed learning teams and determine ways to improve group performance. The authors’ initial views about the dynamics of global software student teams were that it was similar to what could be found in comparable teams in industry. But this initial viewpoint changed, as the authors gathered data from various projects assigned over the five year period. While this research shows that experience, culture, and communication skills can affect a student’s team performance, the data also suggests that student team effectiveness is as much a product of what is assigned; when it is assigned; and how it is evaluated. Among the most significant findings of the project are: Although the proposed model, which hypothesized that individual, culture, and collaborative skill knowledge can predict successful global software learning teams, showed satisfactory fit, it accounted for only 20% of the behaviors in the model. While these factors remain important, other variables seem to be related to group performance. While our model showed that cultural factors had an impact on performance, the cultural factors were shown to be unrelated to a "national" ethos. A newer survey that captures students’ attitudes about "time," did show differences among students by country origin. More communication among global software student teams does not necessarily mean they perform better. While most successful teams’ communication numbers are above average, they do not always generate the "most" number of interactions. Distinct patterns of communication can be associated with different levels of performance. Contrary to the literature [23], low performing teams tend to have a much higher proportion of social communication behaviors than high performing teams. Different grading methods can have a significant effect on how student teams are evaluated and ranked. Research results can also be affected by which grading method is selected and how it is applied. High performing teams spend a higher percentage of their time contributing to the overall completion of the task, while low performing teams tend to spend their time planning or seeking information. It also appears that poor time management and the inability to meet a firm deadline may lead to less-than-desirable results. Designating a specific leader for each group will lead to an increase in the amount of interaction among members of the team. Global software teams show patterns of temporal behaviors that are similar to the software development life-cycle. Products and Data Sets produced Communication and performance data on groups that participated in projects for five years Data cleaning and mining software for processing communication of groups Group scheduling software that enables instructors to schedule group activity Real-time Software modules that display group activities about students, their group and other groups
