Teaching Software Development for Real-World Problems using a Microservice-Based Collaborative Problem-Solving Approach

Abstract

Experienced and skillful software developers are needed in organizations to develop software products effective for their business with shortened time-to-market. Such developers will not only need to code but also be able to work in teams and collaboratively solve real-world problems that organizations are facing. It is challenging for educators to nurture students to become such developers with strong technical, social, and cognitive skills. Towards addressing the challenge, this study presents a Collaborative Software Development Project Framework for a course that focuses on learning microservices architectures and developing a software application for a real-world business. Students get to work in teams to solve a real-world problem of their own choice. They are given opportunities to recognize that the software development process goes beyond writing code and that social and cognitive skills in engaging with each other are also essential. By adopting microservices architectures in the course, students learn to break down the functionalities of their applications into smaller pieces of code with standardized interfaces that can be developed, tested, and deployed independently. This not only helps students to learn various technical skills needed for developing and implementing the functionalities needed by the application in the form of microservices but also facilitates task allocation and coordination among their team members and provides a platform for them to solve problems collaboratively. Upon completion of their projects, students are also asked to reflect on their development process and encouraged to think beyond the basics for better software design and development approaches. The course curriculum incorporates the framework, especially for the student team projects. The earlier teaching weeks introduce a combination of concepts and lab exercises to students as the building blocks. The survey studies show that the framework is effective in enhancing the students’ learning of technical, social, and cognitive skills, while further improvements, such as closer collaboration with other courses, can be done to improve a holistic learning curriculum.