Establishing Trust and Relationships through Video Conferencing in Virtual Collaborations: An Experience Report on a Global Software Engineering Course

Abstract

The rise of globalization in software engineering places a responsibility on educators to adequately prepare students for the unique challenges and demands of Global Software Engineering. Experiential Learning (EL) is an approach to teaching that emphasizes learning by doing. It can potentially enhance student engagement and, therefore, learning in GSE courses. In this paper, we present our findings based on student reflections about their first experience of virtual collaboration with a guest lecturer in a GSE course. In particular, we report on the challenges and learnings for students during this virtual meeting where they reflect on the importance of a pre-established relationship with the facilitator in cross-site communication. We compare our findings from student reflections with those shared by practitioners in our previous study about the challenges of distributed collaboration. We observed that both students and practitioners consider trust, goodwill, and a good relationship as important aspects in distributed communication and collaboration. Furthermore, we highlight that participating in even a single virtual meeting can help the students experience some of the challenges in GSE. We also provide the implications of such student experiences for the educators planning future GSE courses.