Cross-team reflection workshops in software engineering student projects

Development projects are a core element of Software Engineering education because they help students to put theoretical knowledge in practice. As in real practice, retrospective reflection workshops can help to improve learning outcomes by having students re-evaluate their project experiences and relate them to core challenges of Software Engineering project work. One of the challenges connected to reflection workshops in SE education is related to the limited experience of students and the consequent lack of input that they can bring into the reflection process to complement the specific experience of the project on which they reflect upon. In this paper we propose the use of reflection workshops organized with participants from different project teams, e.g. cross-team reflection workshops, in order to offer opportunities to learn from experiences made in other projects, increasing the breadth of input to the reflection process. Based on a case study from a Software Engineering project course this paper addresses the particular benefits of cross-team reflection workshops. We outline what we see as important considerations through a set of lessons learned about the workshops.

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