Evolving Project based Learning to Suit Diverse Student Cohorts

Software engineering courses are increasingly moving towards a project-based learning (PBL) approach. PBL allows abstract software engineering principles and practices to be learnt experientially making the course more appealing to diverse student cohorts. Employers favor PBL as students get exposed to current industry practices, processes and tools, thus narrowing the industry-academia gap. PBL however, poses a number of challenges. Academic staff need to find efficient ways of managing many additional tasks related to PBL such as getting licenses, developing technical materials, managing projects and handling team issues. Students involved in PBL need to be exposed to teamwork and project management skills concurrently. In this paper we present our experience evolving a hybrid-teaching model by using the action research cycle plan-act-observe-reflect over 3 semesters. The main novelty of our approach is the use of projects with varying levels of scaffolding, which made it possible for students with limited programming background to have an enjoyable and beneficial project experience. To ensure fairness, projects with high levels of scaffolding required implementation of more complex use cases to get higher grades. Student surveys reveal such an approach is effective for diverse undergraduate students.