Integrating Globally Distributed Team Projects into Software Engineering Courses Steven Case, Sherry K. Schneider, Laura J. White, Steven J. Kass, Kelly Manning, Norman Wilde University of West Florida Pensacola, US scase@uwf.edu, sschneider@uwf.edu, lwhite@uwf.edu, skass@uwf.edu, kjm40@students.uwf.edu, nwilde@uwf.edu Abstract— This paper describes a research program on the introduction of globally distributed teams into undergraduate software engineering courses. A pilot study, now completed, involved students at a single institution using two different virtual environments while cooperatively developing requirements artifacts in 3-person virtual teams. We describe the results of this pilot study and the plans for its extension to a three-year multi- institution, multi-culture, and multi-language setting. Index Terms—Globally distributed software development student projects, virtual teams, virtual team projects. I. INTRODUCTION Undergraduate students in Software Engineering and Computer Information Systems programs at the University of West Florida are required to take two 16-week courses in Software Engineering: Software Engineering 1 and Software Engineering 2. The students in the Software Engineering track are also required to take a course in Software Engineering Management. Global software development teams have been included as a topic of discussion in the Software Engineering 1 course since 2008. As the use of globally distributed software development has increased in recent years [1], the importance of providing a real experience for our students has become evident. Conversations between faculty in the departments of Computer Science and Psychology at the University of West Florida led to the establishment of an interdisciplinary team to study globally distributed teams with an emphasis on software development teams, and to design real projects for our students. The use of web conferencing and virtual world technology in small teams was injected into a beginning software engineering course during the Fall 2012 semester. This project experience simultaneously served as a pilot study for the design of a sequence of project activities to supplement lectures regarding globally distributed software development. A research proposal integrating this design was submitted within a grant proposal submitted January 2013. The pilot study and its results, and the design for future student projects is described throughout the rest of this paper. II. RELATED WORK On-going research related to virtual teams and teams comprised of members with cross-cultural differences is described in this section. Previous work regarding teaching topics related to globally distributed software development relevant to our objectives is also discussed. Research has characterized higher performing virtual teams by (a) early adoption of process and project management practices, (b) embracing technology, and (c) developing interpersonal relationships [2], although this research did not involve global and multi-cultural teams. Researchers have identified use of communication tools, project management, processing engineering, technical ability, and knowledge transfer as five factors necessary for the implementation of virtual software development teams [3]. Design factors—context, group and social structure, technology, people, and process—combine to influence enabling conditions of shared understanding, integration, and trust, which facilitate both business outcomes and human outcomes such as goal achievement and work satisfaction and commitment [4]. The degree of virtuality as measured by dependence on electronic communication and geographic dispersion and degree of difference such as culture, language, and organization, are potential moderators of the relationships between the design factors and the enabling conditions [4]. Teams distributed across national boundaries may not only differ in culture but may also differ from collocated teams in levels of trust [5][6][7], cohesion [8][9], and social identity [10][11][12]. Other research has shown that distributed virtual teams using video conferencing were less productive than comparable face-to-face teams, but suggests that integrating additional collaborative technologies that increase social presence may circumvent the productivity differences [13]. A meta-analysis of 108 studies of over 10,000 teams was conducted in 2010 to examine the effects of cultural diversity on teamwork [14]. On the positive side, cultural diversity was significantly positively related to creativity and team member satisfaction. On the other hand, diversity was also positively correlated with task conflict and negatively correlated with social integration. These effects were moderated by task complexity, team size, team dispersion, and team tenure. Full-bandwidth communication such as videoconferencing may have the capability to present verbal and paralinguistic cues close to those available in face-to-face interactions [15][16]. On one hand, veridicality produced by video may mitigate the differences between collocated and dispersed teams found in studies using communication technologies with lower bandwidth. On the other hand, perhaps full-bandwidth communication between dispersed team members may actually