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

The work-reflection-learning cycle in SE student projects: Use of collaboration tools
5.6 P6: Shared timeline and individual experience: Supporting
retrospective reflection in student software engineering
teams
Authors: Krogstie, Birgit and Divitini, Monica
I was the first author of this paper and main responsible for setting up the study and
collecting and analyzing the data. The second author has provided feedback and
comments throughout the process.
Published in: Proceedings of the 22 nd Conference on Software Engineering Education
and Training (CSEE&T) 2009
To help SE student teams learn from their project process, we propose the use of facilitated postmortem
workshops in which each team reconstructs its project timeline. Individual team members’ experience of
the project is included by team members drawing individual ‘experience curves’ along the timeline. The
approach is based on current industry practice and adapted in accordance with theory on reflection and
learning. We present the detailed design of the workshops as they were implemented in an
undergraduate SE project course as well as some recommendations for future workshops. The
workshops are effective for promoting active participation, constructing a shared representation of the
project process, and revisiting project issues from multiple perspectives. Evaluation showed that students
were satisfied with the workshop and motivated to use the approach in later projects.
The background of the paper was the assumption that existing post-mortem analysis
approaches from SE industry may be successfully taken into use in SE student projects,
with some adaptation. This would give the students experience with a particular aspect
of SE practice and help them learn from their project experience. The feasibility of the
approach in terms of time (for students and staff) was a key constraint in the adaptation
to the educational setting.
The paper presents a concrete method for supporting retrospective reflection in student
SE teams. The method is adapted from state-of-the-art SE industry practice and is based
on the individual and collective construction of a timeline of project events and the
drawing of individual experience curves along the timeline, indicating how positive or
negative the experience was at different points in time. The timeline and curves serve as
a resource for the team‟s discussion of lessons learned. In the student projects, the
approach was used in a short 60 minute workshop at the end of the project. There was
no formal deliverable from the workshop, but the students were recommended to draw
on what they had learned when writing their reflection notes (one for each team) to be
handed in a few days later. The timetable of the workshop is shown in Table 3.
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