IBistro: a learning environment for knowledge construction in distributed software engineering courses

We have taught several distributed software engineering project courses with students and real clients. During these projects, students in Pittsburgh and Munich, Germany collaborated in the development of a single system. Our experiences showed that software development is communication intensive and requires the collaboration of many stakeholders. Communication is challenging in distributed contexts: participants do not all know each other and work at different times and locations; the number of participants and their organization change during the project; and participants belong to different communities. Hence, to deal with the global marketplace, it is critical to provide students with distributed collaboration skills. To improve the teaching of collaboration in software engineering, we propose iBistro, an augmented, distributed, and ubiquitous communication space. iBistro aims to overcome problems resulting from miscommunications and information loss in informal or casual meetings. iBistro enables distributed groups to collaborate and cooperate in software projects and therefore provides an environment for learning in diverse aspects such as project management, programming skills, and social skills. With the addition of techniques from artificial intelligence, such as student modeling, and intelligent support mechanisms, such as computer supported group formation, distributed tutoring becomes feasible.