UC Irvine

Team-based projects are a cornerstone of contemporary software engineering programs. Although they can be effective in improving learning of the course materials and imparting teamwork skills, teamwork can present challenges for both instructors and students. Well-known problems include teams not following recommended processes (e.g., producing all necessary artifacts at the last minute) and team dynamics interfering with progress (e.g., social loafing, dominating personalities, failing to consider others and their ideas). This thesis introduces TeamCAST, a tool I specifically designed to track both progress and contributions over the course of a team project. TeamCAST is based on the notion of students submitting all intermediate work, which TeamCAST then displays on a dashboard for the instructor to monitor. This thesis reports on the primary design decisions underlying TeamCAST and presents the results of a pilot study in a 179 student software design class.