Cadxela: An educational tool for supporting the global software engineering education at undergraduate level

Abstract

AbstractThe Global Software Development (GSD) strategy has introduced many benefits into the modern software industry, but it has also created many risks that can negatively affect the quality of the final product. Moreover, this approach is still in constant evolution and, therefore, diverse issues and challenges related to geographical, temporal, and sociocultural distances are also present. Therefore, many universities around the world are increasing their efforts in creating programs to prepare more skilled graduates to work in globally distributed environments. However, providing GSD courses among universities distributed in different locations is not so profitable and normally involves a high number of collaborations among various teachers and students that traditional teaching approaches cannot support. In this study, the Cadxela tool is presented to enable undergraduate students to acquire practical experience in GSD and improve their communication and teamwork skills. An empirical evaluation was conducted on Cadxela involving students and teachers from five universities in Mexico, Spain, Chile, Cuba, and Peru. The participants developed a total of 15 projects to experience different problems related to geographical, temporal, and sociocultural distances. The obtained results from pre and post‐evaluations showed that Cadxela can contribute to facilitating the development of practical projects on GSD undergraduate courses, while students develop their knowledge, social skills associated with this topic as well as teamwork and communication skills. Finally, the data collected on the teachers' perceptions suggested that Cadxela can also be a useful tool for introducing the GSD approach at the undergraduate level.