Small Changing Groups



Student teams are heterogeneous with respect to prerequisites and expectations. Students have already opinions about software engineering and some students are interested in low-level hard skills only. It is a risk, that a team splits into small groups of students with equal interests. EASE considers heterogeneous teams not only as a risk but also as a chance for collaborative learning. In EASE the team is divided into new groups every week. Even if a task depends on another task, at least one group member should be replaced. There are a lot of different interesting topics in a software project, i.e. the team has to develop different tiers, must deal with different technologies, applies different methodologies. In a professional project, team members specialize in order to enhance team productivity. But team productivity must not be the foremost goal in a software course, instead it is pity if students do not seize the chance of learning about different topics because they specialize. The concepts of small changing groups causes students to work on different parts of the system. Students learn courage and leadership.