Bringing together undergraduate and postgraduate students in software engineering team project: experiences and lessons

Abstract

Software Engineering education requires exposing students to real-world problems providing a framework to simulate real-world conditions. For this purpose, computer science students usually work in teams with each member undertaking a specific role. In this paper, we are discussing our experiences when adopting a different approach to teaching software engineering courses. In an attempt to provide students the possibility to develop different skills at each education level, we brought together undergraduate and postgraduate students in the same team with postgraduates adopting the role of a software project manager. Different roles were assigned to the undergraduate students in the team by the project manager, but all students worked towards the same goal. We present in this paper the approach followed and how we applied it, we discuss the exchange of skills among the team members, and finally, a discussion is provided on the lessons learned from our side and the students' point of view.