Abstract:

One of the key educational aspects of universities of applied sciences is to facilitate practical knowledge, which graduates can quickly and professionally apply in their daily business life. In co-op study programs the need to put theoretical knowledge into practice is even more pronounced, as students spend half their week learning new skills and the other half directly applying them, working part-time in partner companies.

In the field of software engineering, development has increasingly changed from classical models to agile models in recent years. Thus, partner companies of co-op IT study programs expect students to have basic knowledge of agile software development paradigms as well as first-hand experience using agile frameworks, but they also require students to quickly adapt to an "agile mindset". Students, however, possess a "students' mindset", rather thinking in subjects, semesters and grades than in sprints, self-organized and fully committed teams and product increments.

Searching for an answer to the question on how to better prepare students for their work at partner companies by providing them with state-of-the-art software development methods and help them develop an "agile mindset", the authors combined two lectures of the co-op IT-Bachelor program in Mobile Software Development. They used the agile framework "Scrum", which is taught as part of the lecture "Agile Project Management", to conduct the practical exercises of the lecture "Web Application Development". The students spent 3 sprints as development teams, working on creating and enhancing a (potentially shippable) product increment from pre-defined user stories, which focused on different topics. The lecturers took on the roles of product owners and customers in the sprint review meetings to provide students with insights from different perspectives.

A survey conducted after the end of the combined lectures and the first term of students working at partner companies confirmed that students feel better prepared for meeting the partner companies' expectations of students having an "agile mindset". However, despite being familiar with team building in online teaching environments, having up to 14 years of experience in hybrid teaching, the authors also detected new challenges in team building due to the online-only teaching environment caused by Covid-19 restrictions. Results suggested that students required additional support and guidance to compensate the lack of social interaction caused by the online-only learning environment.

Keywords:

Co-op, team work, practical education, agile, software engineering, scrum, web technologies.