E-Learning For Software Engineering: A Case Study On Teaching Information Systems Online Group Project With Extreme Programming

This paper reports the experience gained in software engineering group work within the framework of a fourteen week master’s level graduate course on information systems development. Teams of three to five members developed web-based application systems using the Distributed eXtreme Programming (XP) methodology. A case study is proposed to understand the issues encountered by students during the software development process and to determine the impact of XP methodology as well as team members’ geographical distribution on students’ overall performance. We suggest that teaching an information systems group project online with agile methodology (i.e. distributed XP) brings several issues to be considered before and during the development process. This study points out these issues, particularly those regarding student teams’ communication, coordination, and collaboration practices. Improvement of these issues in the future would help educators develop more effective education settings and help students enhance their performance.