Agile Iteration Reviews in a Project Course: A key to Improved Feedback and Assessment Practice

Abstract

Agile development is increasingly taught at universities worldwide. Project courses are redesigned in order to better fit these methods, both with respect to content taught and how courses are organised. This position paper builds on experience with reviews as a feedback practice in a bachelor level project course. Reviews are a key element in agile development, but there has been little discussion in the software engineering education literature on the role of such reviews in improving feedback and assessment. Through examples of course improvement work in a course with about 140 students in 24 teams, we show how review practices are tailored to better comply with principles of good feedback practice which intend to empower students and help self-regulate learning. We argue that reviews can provide formative assessment and improve the learning outcome. Finally, we conclude with five lessons learned from three years of continuous improvement.