Thematic Analysis of Group Software Project Change Logs: An Expanded Study

Abstract

Abstract Collaboration is an integral part of software development and as such is a common feature in many software engineering degree programs. However, assessing student collaboration is a notably difficult process whose measures are almost entirely subjective. This paper presents a study of a number of software development projects, including 22 collaborative, distributed student projects and four real-world open source projects. A thematic analysis was carried out on the change-logs of each of the 26 projects, creating a breakdown of activities over the life of each project; in total, over 4,200 log entries were categorised into one of six activity types. The analysis was used to explore the collaboration and behaviour of students in groupwork and to investigate the use of thematic analysis in assessing the collaboration aspect of group projects. It concludes that project change-logs are useful sources of data when assessing group projects, and that thematic analysis is a valuable and viable technique to aid in this assessment, uncovering information regarding student behaviour and development practices.