Improving Learning Outcomes through Systematic Group Reformation - The Role of Skills and Personality in Software Engineering Education

Abstract

Group or team formation has been a well-studied field in numerous contexts, such as business teams, project teams, and educational teams. There has, however, been little consideration of how groups or particularly project teams might have to be reorganized during a lecture in order to yield an optimal learning outcome. Empirical studies show that the outcome of groups will be affected by a number of factors, including the individual behavior of each group member, their skills and inclinations. In this research, the authors aim at finding correlations between the individual characteristics and learning outcomes during a running lecture so that teaching and learning can be improved. A study has been carried out that involved software engineering students over the past three years. The results show an improvement in the learning outcomes for groups that were systematically formed, which, for future settings, could enable educators as well as project leaders to systematically form groups and improve the outcomes of these groups in various domains.