Computer science students' experiences of decision making in project groups

This paper describes a study intended to understand the ways in which students experience the process of decision-making in computer science student projects. It also investigates the ways the student team works to make decisions. The empirical setting for the study is a semester-long project with 22 final year computer science students. It is a qualitative study where data are gathered using interviews and analyzed using phenomenography. Six categories have been identified describing how students experience the process of decision-making in computer science projects. The level of sophistication differs between the categories. The first describes an experience of decision-making as individual decisions too small and unimportant to be handled by anyone other than the individual. At the other end is the experience of decision-making as a democratic process involving both the full group and the context in which the group acts. The other four categories are situated between these two extremes.

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