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This Innovative Practice Full Paper presents our learnings of the process to perform a Master of Science class with eduScrum integrating real world problems as projects. We prepared, performed, and evaluated an agile educational concept for the new Master of Science program Digital Transformation organized and provided by the department of business computing at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts - Hochschule Hannover in Germany. The course deals with innovative methodologies of agile project management and is attended by 25 students. We performed the class due the summer term in 2019 and 2020 as a teaching pair. The eduScrum method has been used in different educational contexts, including higher education. During the approach preparation, we decided to use challenges, problems, or questions from the industry. Thus, we acquired four companies and prepared in coordination with them dedicated project descriptions. Each project description was refined in the form of a backlog (list of requirements). We divided the class into four eduScrum teams, one team for each project. The subdivision of the class was done randomly.
Since we wanted to integrate realistic projects into industry partners’ implementation, we decided to adapt the eduScrum approach. The eduScrum teams were challenged with different projects, e.g., analyzing a dedicated phenomenon in a real project or creating a theoretical model for a company’s new project management approach. We present our experiences of the whole process to prepare, perform and evaluate an agile educational approach combined with projects from practice. We found, that the students value the agile method using real world problems. However, the results are mainly based on the summer term 2019, this paper also includes our learnings from virtual distance teaching during the Covid 19 pandemic in summer term 2020. The paper contributes to the distribution of methods for higher education teaching in the classroom and distance learning.
Social skills are essential for a successful understanding of agile methods in software development. Several studies highlight the opportunities and advantages of integrating real-world projects and problems while collaborating with companies into higher education using agile methods. This integration comes with several opportunities and advantages for both the students and the company. The students are able to interact with real-world software development teams, analyze and understand their challenges and identify possible measures to tackle them. However, the integration of real-world problems and companies is complex and may come with a high effort in terms of coordination and preparation of the course. The challenges related to the interaction and communication with students are increased by virtual distance teaching during the Covid-19 pandemic as direct contact with students is missing. Also, we do not know how problem-based learning in virtual distance teaching is valued by the students. This paper presents our adapted eduScrum approach and learning outcome of integrating experiments with real-world software development teams from two companies into a Master of Science course organized in virtual distance teaching. The evaluation shows that students value analyzing real-world problems using agile methods. They highlight the interaction with real-world software development teams. Also, the students appreciate the organization of the course using an iterative approach with eduScrum. Based on our findings, we present four recommendations for the integration of agile methods and real world problems into higher education in virtual distance teaching settings. The results of our paper contribute to the practitioner and researcher/lecturer community, as we provide valuable insights how to fill the gap between practice and higher education in virtual distance settings.