For several weeks in October 2022, we set out to create a “Back Alley D & D” console application with Java. The point of this project was to take us through the entire Software Development Life Cycle (Planning, Design, Coding, Testing, Maintenance). This was probably the most ambitious project I had taken on with any class in my brief career so far. The project had very few well defined requirements outside of “Develop a game in the real world and then figure out how to convert it to an application”. Looking back on it, the idea was to allow for more autonomy among the groups, but I believe it also set up the project to be far more complicated from all aspects.
The reason the limited set up made the project more complicated is that each group ended up developing requirements and rules for the game that were very different from one another. This made it more difficult to support as a teacher (trying to remember all rules), and it probably did not encourage cross-group collaboration.
Another concern that surfaced during this project was related to student engagement. Some students really embraced this opportunity while others seemed to resign to feeling lost and it led to a higher degree of being off task. Giving the high degree of support I needed to provide throughout the room, students who did not take the initiative to truly engage in the group work were often lost, frustrated and off task, which compromised the desired learning environment.
A major positive thing I found while working on this project is that I saw many students more invigorated and engaged than they typically are when working straight out of a textbook. I heard a lot of conversations that sounded like conversations you would hear in a working development environment. These conversations ranged from discussing algorithms and data structures, to discussing how to adjust the scope of the project to meet deadlines.
If I were to do this again, I believe I would start with more defined requirements for the program and all aspects of it (flowcharts, class diagrams etc.) I would also want to better model the creation of each of the desired artifacts so it is clear what was necessary to be completed. Given more rigid requirements, it would allow for easier review and informal checks for student understanding because I would not have the overhead of matching each artifact with its different set of requirements among the groups. I would also be better able to guide the development of each group because I would have a better idea of where it should end up.
If starting over, I would probably also change up the groups a bit. For this project, I basically allowed students to work with who they were most comfortable with. I did this because I wanted easy collaboration for this experiment. I think next time it will be better to take students out of their comfort zone to encourage new team-building skills and ensure senior leadership in all groups.
Overall, I would consider this project a success from the point of view that it gave me a lot to learn from and it gave many students some solid group development experience. I found the life/energy in the room (and my excitement for each day) to be higher than when we stick to the same book routine, but if I were to do it again, I believe it will need more stepped out, and defined up front.
