The work-reflection-learning cycle - Department of Computer and ...

of examples from the case illustrating how students reflect on their relationship to
different communities in the project. In section 5, we discuss our findings in the light
of theory and suggest implications for the pedagogical design of project courses.
Finally, we address limitations and further work, and conclude the paper.
2. Cross-community collaboration: the role of goals and boundary objects
In this section we elaborate on three generic aspects of customer-driven SE student
projects that can be seen as central to students’ learning: stakeholders as learning
communities, stakeholders’ goals for project engagement, and project activity as a
question of relating to and reconciling the goals and interests of interrelated learning
communities.
2.1. Project stakeholders represent different kinds of learning communities
Learning communities are communities designed to support learning. Riel and Polin
[8] describe three, overlapping types: Task-based learning communities are groups of
people who are organized around a task, working together for a specified period of time
to produce a product. Practice-based learning communities are larger groups with
shared goals and provide members with richly contextualized and supported arenas for
learning. Knowledge-based learning communities resemble the practice-based ones but
are focused on producing external knowledge about the practice.
A university is officially designated to serve a role in society as a practice-based and
knowledge-based learning community. Its practices include research and
teaching/learning. A part of the university organization, i.e. a SE study program, can be
considered a learning community of its own. A customer organization may also be
considered both practice-based and knowledge-based, the weight on the latter
depending on the actual policies and practices (e.g. knowledge management efforts). A
sub-community in the customer organization may typically be serving as the learning
community most directly relating to the student project. The customer-driven SE
student project exists for a much more limited time than the other two communities, but
it can be considered as a type of learning community focused on the achievement of a
task: a task-based learning community.
University
SE study program
SE profession
learning
Customer
organization
SE student
project
Figure 1: The SE project at the intersection of learning communities,
Several overlapping communities will potentially learn from the project (see Figure 1). The
impact is likely to be smaller, and the learning cycle longer, the more general the community.
E.g., the project supervisor may learn about project supervision from one session to the next;
20th Conference on Software Engineering Education & Training (CSEET'07)
0-7695-2893-7/07 $20.00 © 2007
Authorized licensed use limited to: Norges Teknisk-Naturvitenskapelige Universitet. Downloaded on February 5, 2010 at 08:55 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
100