Students as co-producers in a multidisciplinary software engineering project: addressing cultural distance and cross-cohort handover
This article reports on an undergraduate software engineering project in which, over a period of two years, four student teams from different cohorts developed a note-taking app for four academic clients at the students’ own university. We investigated how projects involving internal clients can giv...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
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Taylor & Francis
2018
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| Online Access: | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/52516/ |
| _version_ | 1848798743726391296 |
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| author | Foster, David Gilardi, Filippo Martin, Paul Song, Wei Towey, Dave White, Andrew |
| author_facet | Foster, David Gilardi, Filippo Martin, Paul Song, Wei Towey, Dave White, Andrew |
| author_sort | Foster, David |
| building | Nottingham Research Data Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | This article reports on an undergraduate software engineering project in which, over a period of two years, four student teams from different cohorts developed a note-taking app for four academic clients at the students’ own university. We investigated how projects involving internal clients can give students the benefits of engaging in real software development while also giving them experience of a student-staff collaboration that has its own benefits for students, academics, and the university more broadly. As the university involved is a Sino-Foreign university located in China, where most students are Chinese and most teaching staff are not, this ‘student as co-producer’ approach interacts with another feature of the project: cultural distance. Based on analysis of notes, reports, interviews, and focus groups, we recommend that students should be provided with communicative strategies for dealing with academics as clients; universities should develop policies on ownership of student-staff collaborations; and projects should include a formalised handover process. This article can serve as guidance for educators considering a ‘students as co-producers’ approach for software development projects. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T20:24:38Z |
| format | Article |
| id | nottingham-52516 |
| institution | University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T20:24:38Z |
| publishDate | 2018 |
| publisher | Taylor & Francis |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | nottingham-525162020-05-04T19:41:27Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/52516/ Students as co-producers in a multidisciplinary software engineering project: addressing cultural distance and cross-cohort handover Foster, David Gilardi, Filippo Martin, Paul Song, Wei Towey, Dave White, Andrew This article reports on an undergraduate software engineering project in which, over a period of two years, four student teams from different cohorts developed a note-taking app for four academic clients at the students’ own university. We investigated how projects involving internal clients can give students the benefits of engaging in real software development while also giving them experience of a student-staff collaboration that has its own benefits for students, academics, and the university more broadly. As the university involved is a Sino-Foreign university located in China, where most students are Chinese and most teaching staff are not, this ‘student as co-producer’ approach interacts with another feature of the project: cultural distance. Based on analysis of notes, reports, interviews, and focus groups, we recommend that students should be provided with communicative strategies for dealing with academics as clients; universities should develop policies on ownership of student-staff collaborations; and projects should include a formalised handover process. This article can serve as guidance for educators considering a ‘students as co-producers’ approach for software development projects. Taylor & Francis 2018-06-18 Article PeerReviewed Foster, David, Gilardi, Filippo, Martin, Paul, Song, Wei, Towey, Dave and White, Andrew (2018) Students as co-producers in a multidisciplinary software engineering project: addressing cultural distance and cross-cohort handover. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice . ISSN 1470-1278 Students as co-producers; student projects; inter-cultural communication; multi-cultural education; multi-disciplinary projects; software engineering https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13540602.2018.1486295 doi:10.1080/13540602.2018.1486295 doi:10.1080/13540602.2018.1486295 |
| spellingShingle | Students as co-producers; student projects; inter-cultural communication; multi-cultural education; multi-disciplinary projects; software engineering Foster, David Gilardi, Filippo Martin, Paul Song, Wei Towey, Dave White, Andrew Students as co-producers in a multidisciplinary software engineering project: addressing cultural distance and cross-cohort handover |
| title | Students as co-producers in a multidisciplinary software engineering project: addressing cultural distance and cross-cohort handover |
| title_full | Students as co-producers in a multidisciplinary software engineering project: addressing cultural distance and cross-cohort handover |
| title_fullStr | Students as co-producers in a multidisciplinary software engineering project: addressing cultural distance and cross-cohort handover |
| title_full_unstemmed | Students as co-producers in a multidisciplinary software engineering project: addressing cultural distance and cross-cohort handover |
| title_short | Students as co-producers in a multidisciplinary software engineering project: addressing cultural distance and cross-cohort handover |
| title_sort | students as co-producers in a multidisciplinary software engineering project: addressing cultural distance and cross-cohort handover |
| topic | Students as co-producers; student projects; inter-cultural communication; multi-cultural education; multi-disciplinary projects; software engineering |
| url | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/52516/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/52516/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/52516/ |