Abstract:

Software development today is a global process. Multi-national teams, in different time zones, with different native languages, all need to work together on large software projects. Many global software development projects have failed to deliver the expected cost savings or have not been completed on time. Programming skills alone are not enough for today’s IT graduates. In addition to knowledge of agile project management methods, intercultural understanding is vital in order to work together in geographically distributed, international teams. Due to time and budgetary constraints, few computer science students have the opportunity to acquire the international experience necessary to work together with software developers from different cultural backgrounds.

The question arises about what is the best method to teach these intercultural soft skills. In this paper, a virtual, team-teaching experience between two universities is described: the National Polytechnic Institute in Mexico City, Mexico and the Nuremberg Institute of Technology in Germany. At each university, a team of approximately 20 students in each country cooperate on a group project. Communication between the two groups is limited to video conferences, chats and e-mail. The teams exchange documents and code using cloud-based project management and collaboration software. Two different teaching methods are compared for two different semester classes: a traditional, instructor-based lecture vs. a project-based learning approach. Results will be presented comparing the results of these two approaches.

Keywords:

Project-Based Learning, Global Software Engineering, Virtual Classroom, International, Intercultural.