Enhancing Student Experience in Team-Based Project Courses Using Essence Reflection Meetings

Abstract

Background: Many software engineering curriculum contain a team-based project course. This is the case of Carnegie Mellon University Silicon Valley's masters of science in software engineering. In this context, we have been using Essence Reflection Meetings for five semesters with 17 teams and approximately 70 students. During these meetings, the teams reflect on various project's dimensions based on a systems thinking framework. The positive results have been published in research papers.Activity and Discussions: Participants will learn about Essence Reflection Meetings for team-based project courses by practicing in a classroom environment. They will discuss challenges and solutions for team-based project courses, and how the proposed approach could potentially be leveraged in their own teaching environment.Organization: We will start the workshop with a discussion revealing the participants positive and negative experiences with team-based projects. After briefly introducing the Essence's systems thinking framework and our research results, we will use hands-on training exercises to demonstrate how to use the approach. This will be followed with guided debriefing. Finally, we will go deeper into the Essence framework, and discuss our research results and their applicability in various teaching environments.Learning Objectives: By the end of the workshop, participants will be familiar with a systems thinking framework that they can leverage to coach their students teams and monitor their progress. They will be able to articulate the pros and cons of applying the approach in their own teaching environment.