Participation patterns in student teams

Abstract

We describe a process that we applied for teaching teamwork in a Software Engineering module. Our objective with this process was to create opportunities for our students to experience some of the problems of working in a group before they formed teams in which they had to work for the rest of the year. The process entails expecting students to work on well defined assignments for short periods in teams where risk factors were induced. Through experiencing these short bursts of intense team tribulation students are prepared to handle difficult events and situations in their teams. We describe the design and implementation of this process. We report on changes in the levels of participation of the students during the process. We offer our explanation of possible factors that may have caused the observed variations. © 2012 ACM.