Title :
Work in progress: A machine learning approach for assessment and prediction of teamwork effectiveness in software engineering education
Author :
Petkovic, Dragutin ; Okada, Kenichi ; Sosnick, M. ; Iyer, Amrit ; Shenhaochen Zhu ; Todtenhoefer, R. ; Shihong Huang
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Comput. Sci., San Francisco State Univ., San Francisco, CA, USA
Abstract :
One of the challenges in effective software engineering (SE) education is the lack of objective assessment methods of how well student teams learn the critically needed teamwork practices, defined as the ability: (i) to learn and effectively apply SE processes in a teamwork setting, and (ii) to work as a team to develop satisfactory software (SW) products. In addition, there are no effective methods for predicting learning effectiveness in order to enable early intervention in the classroom. Most of the current approaches to assess achievement of SE teamwork skills rely solely on qualitative and subjective data taken as surveys at the end of the class and analyzed only with very rudimentary data analysis. In this paper we present a novel approach to address the assessment and prediction of student learning of teamwork effectiveness in software engineering education based on: a) extracting only objective and quantitative student team activity data during their team class project; b) pairing these data with related independent observations and grading of student team effectiveness in SE process and SE product components in order to create “training database” and c) applying a machine learning (ML) approach, namely random forest classification (RF), to the above training database in order to create ML models, ranked factors and rules that can both explain (e.g. assess) as well as provide prediction of the student teamwork effectiveness. These student team activity data are being collected in joint and already established (since 2006) SE classes at San Francisco State University (SFSU), Florida Atlantic University (FAU) and Fulda University, Germany (Fulda), from approximately 80 students each year, working in about 15 teams, both local and global (with students from multiple schools).
Keywords :
computer science education; data analysis; educational institutions; learning (artificial intelligence); pattern classification; software engineering; team working; FAU; Florida Atlantic University; Fulda University; Germany; ML approach; RF classification; SE education; SFSU; San Francisco State University; data analysis; data extraction; data partition; machine learning approach; random forest classification; software engineering education; software product; student team; student team activity data; teamwork effectiveness; teamwork setting; training database; Educational institutions; Machine learning; Software; Software engineering; Teamwork; Training; assessment; machine learning; software engineering education; software engineering teamwork;
Conference_Titel :
Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), 2012
Conference_Location :
Seattle, WA
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4673-1353-7
Electronic_ISBN :
0190-5848
DOI :
10.1109/FIE.2012.6462205