Software Design and Modeling Practices in an Online Software Engineering Course: The Learners' Perspective

Background. Global Software Engineering (GSE) education is an established practice in academia. Several methods and tools support communication and programming activities, but earlier development stages, such as software design and modeling practices, are less explored. Aim. The goal of this work is to analyze the learners' perspective during an online Software Engineering course. In particular, we focus on planning/organization activities and socio-technical challenges during the software design and modeling process. Method. We used a mixed-method approach to collect data from 30 undergraduate students enrolled in an online Software Engineering course. We combined questionnaires and interviews to analyze four GSE elements (i.e., communication practices, team collaboration, task allocation and distribution, and usage of collaboration tools). Moreover, we analyzed the socio-technical challenges faced by the teams. Results. Brainstorming is the most common practice used for planning software design and modeling activities. According to students, the usage of variant design notation is among the technical challenges. Despite the challenges, students would prefer to continue working in distributed teams. Conclusions. The result shares the lessons learned that can be helpful to build best practices for managing software design and modeling activities in GSE project-based courses. It includes the need to define standard architectural terminologies, standard list of collaboration tools, early identification of architectural artifact dependencies, frequent design reviews, and face-to-face kick-off meetings.