Analysing computer science students' teamwork role adoption in an online self-organised teamwork activity

Abstract

Computer Science (CS) professionals are regularly required to work in teams to solve complex problems. Agile software development processes are increasingly popular in organisations as a method for teamwork but the self-organising nature of the method and lack of strictly allocated roles means that graduates need to know how to adopt and transition between roles effectively. While online teamwork makes team processes and behaviours transparent, educators are often confronted by the amount of data and difficulty in how to judge roles and behaviours to provide meaningful feedback to students. Furthermore, assessment of teamwork does not necessarily ignite a need to identify roles and behaviours as feedback is usually based on the product, rather than processes and behaviours. Using Dickinson and McIntyre’s teamwork roles, we extend the framework to include explicit behaviours to analyse one class of students’ self-organised team interactions in an online discussion space as solved open-ended problems. The collaborative activity did encourage role adoption, however not all students moved fluidly through the roles. Despite the lack of defined roles, one or two students adopted leadership roles, but attempts at leadership were not always successful. We discovered other less-obvious roles were equally important for maintaining and progressing team discussions. In this paper, we discuss the roles that emerged and suggest strategies for encouraging and assessing online teamwork. Our framework may prove to be a guide for others seeking to analyse students’ teamwork and provides a guide for what behaviours a teacher might look for in online environments. Our findings support the need to develop tools that provide realtime visual feedback to students and teachers about student behaviour and roles when undertaking teamwork in online spaces.