Digging into group establishment: Intervention design and evaluation

Ville Isomöttönen,Emmi Ritvos

doi:10.1016/j.jss.2021.110974

Abstract

Previous research has documented challenges in students’ group work. An identifiable segment of the previous research that relates to improving students’ group work conditions is the study of group formation and self- and peer-assessment. Though studies that primarily focus on how to address the conditions of students’ group work and the existing problems can be found, there are not many related to higher education settings. On this ground, the present article advances a qualitative evaluation of the intervention that promotes student groups’ self-awareness and thereby self-regulation toward fair group work during a software engineering project. An inductive thematic analysis was applied to the students’ written reflections on the intervention. To further understand the results, the concept of “group establishment,” referring to destructiveness that complicates individuals’ truthful living at the group level, was employed to reflect on the resulting themes. Hoggett (1998) provided this articulation by synthesizing previous results in psychoanalytic theory. Students’ experiences with the intervention revealed several value gains, including personally identified benefits as well as open group mood, consolidation of grouping, conceptual learning about group work, and regulation for task allocation. Noted challenges included dishonesty and a personal role conflict, and some students reported minor effects on group performance. Students valued safety in the intervention situation and argued that the intervention was needed from outside the group. A summative review of the students’ experiences suggests that the intervention was useful for all groups. The results are discussed from a pedagogic and the aforementioned psychoanalytic perspective, and remarks are made for software engineering education.

Highlights

Employers set high expectations of graduates’ inter-personal skills while identifying a gap between their expectations and graduates’ levels of education (Hernández-March et al, 2009)
The third refers to the aspects that students considered useful when no obvious contribution to the group work was personally experienced
It is first pointed out that the target course students begin their project with group members with whom they have not previously worked, and this fairly short-term project course is just one course among the others studied in parallel

Summary

Introduction

Employers set high expectations of graduates’ inter-personal skills while identifying a gap between their expectations and graduates’ levels of education (Hernández-March et al, 2009). In a systematic review of challenges and recommendations in global software engineering education, group work was identified as a key challenge and an area that requires educational attention (Clear et al, 2015). Conforming to employers’ expectations, software engineering (SE) course project descriptions include narratives in which group work is explained as preparing students for working life (e.g., Brodie et al, 2008; Dos Santos et al, 2009; Jun, 2010; Pérez and Rubio, 2020). Narratives of group pedagogy associated with student-centered learning are shown in SE project course descriptions (e.g., Souza et al, 2019; Pérez and Rubio, 2020), and according to the feedback from such settings, students enjoy and benefit from peer learning and feel better prepared for the future (e.g., Ahmad et al, 2014). The value of a group is evident in students’ appreciation of a committed group as a support network that helps group members work through the project (Isomöttönen, 2011; Isomöttönen et al, 2019)

Results

Discussion

Conclusion