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Communication patterns in collaborative software engineering courses: a case for computer-supported collaboration

Collaboration has become an important teaching method in software engineering and there are several computer supported collaboration tools to aid the development and learning process. However, most studies have concentrated on intra-group studies. We believe that computer supported collaborative learning tools can also aid software engineering students to have beneficial inter-group collaboration. In this research the communication patterns in three collaborative software engineering courses were analyzed with the method of social network analysis. It was found out that students do collaborate, but mostly along pre-established social connections. The main reason for this was the difficulty in matchmaking and discovering others who were struggling with the same problems. Our proposal is to study how students in similar learning scenarios benefit from computer supported collaborative tools that increase networking opportunities. The findings presented in this paper provide a baseline for comparison when performing social network analysis in future studies.