Affective assessment of team skills in agile CS1 labs

Abstract

Team experiences can be important learning experiences, and industry highly values team skills in graduates. Low retention rates might also be improved with early team experiences because team experiences have been linked to increases in the sense of belonging, a key retention factor. Team experiences in upper-level courses could also benefit from earlier team experiences. The purpose of this paper is to describe and evaluate an early use of teams in the second semester of our CS1 sequence. The instructional methodology drew heavily upon the professional practices of an agile software development model, Extreme Programming. These professional practices fostered the development of team skills during a semester-long project in a closed lab. The evaluation of our experience revealed aspects of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Areas for improvement and future work are also explained.