Students as co-producers in a multidisciplinary software engineering project: addressing cultural distance and cross-cohort handover |
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| Authors: | David Foster Filippo Gilardi Wei Song Dave Towey Andrew White |
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| Institution: | 1. The Centre for English Language Education, University of Nottingham Ningbo China, Ningbo, China;2. The School of International Communications, University of Nottingham Ningbo China, Ningbo, China;3. The School of Computer Science, University of Nottingham Ningbo China, Ningbo, China |
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| Abstract: | This article reports an undergraduate software engineering project in which, over a period of 2 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. |
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| Keywords: | Students as co-producers student projects inter-cultural communication multi-cultural education multi-disciplinary projects [software engineering] |
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