Experiential Learning of Software Project Management and Software Development via Course Collaboration

The skills to effectively manage software development teams and to productively interact with a project manager are important in the computing professions. Teaching these skills in a traditional academic setting, however, is challenging. To support the experiential learning of these skills, we established a collaboration between two computing courses, a sophomore-level one and a senior-level one, where the seniors serve as managers of teams of sophomores on a semester-long project. This paper describes the collaboration and evaluates it in terms of student learning and experience based on three iterations of that collaboration. The associated course materials and evaluation instruments are made publicly available.