SIGCSE 2026 Affiliated Event

When: Wednesday, February 18, 2026 - 1:00-5:00 PM
Where: Cervantes Convention Center, St. Louis, Missouri, Meeting Room 105
For general information about the location and the conference see SIGCSE 2026

Student Participation in Team-based Software Projects

Do your student teams struggle with communication issues? Poor time management? Learning new technologies? Are you looking for better ways to support team interactions? to evaluate team and individual performance? to fairly assign grades? to manage demand on your time for team projects?

This half day event will provide an opportunity for instructors to present and share learning materials and to discuss the challenges of courses that include team-based software projects.

The session organizers focus on student participation in Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software (HFOSS), but we seek participation from any instructor who teaches software development that prepares students for professional software practice. We are particularly interested in team-based software projects that have all or most of these characteristics:

• Students work in teams
• The existing or envisioned code base has significant size and complexity
• The project has a client
• The development process uses mainstream tools, such as a Git-based platform like GitHub

This event will consist of short presentations of learning materials and teaching approaches by organizers and attendees. Presentations will be supplemented by discussion among attendees. The primary goal is to give attendees new learning materials and approaches that they can apply in their own classes. A secondary goal is to help attendees meet other instructors dealing with similar challenges in their teaching. Attendees are invited to suggest topics that they would like to discuss and offer short presentations on learning materials or teaching tips that they have found effective in their own courses. Session organization will depend on participant suggestions for presentation, but likely topic areas will include the following:

Software engineering tools - Git platform skills, starting with features and extending to how the features enable team communication and coordination; CI/CD and project workflows; AI use by students for software development.

Software teams - student team organization, monitoring, and evaluation; Student roles and responsibilities; development of student professional skills and dispositions; workload management for instructors and students.

Software in the wild - Learning about a new code base without fear; Evaluating open source software for possible inclusion in a software product; Basic concepts of software copyright and license; finding and managing clients for software projects; maintenance and support for student-developed software projects.

Computing for Social Good - Introducing the positive power of computing; Social responsibility for computing majors.

Information for Attendees

There is no charge for attending this event, but participants should register according to the instructions below and are expected to be registered to attend the SIGCSE Technical Symposium.

We hope you will consider offering to share some learning material or a teaching tip. The organizers have can provide all the content, but we think the event would be much more interesting if others also contribute. Do you have an in-class activity you use to help teams gel? An assignment for team peer review? A tip for dealing with under-performing students on a project team? A tool that saves you time in tracking team status? Something else that makes your team projects better? If yes, please volunteer to share something when you register for the event!

To Register

To register, please complete the form here.

NOTE: seating is limited, so please do not assume you are attending before receiving a confirmation from us.

Agenda

The table below is a draft agenda. Details will be completed based on teaching materials and tips people offer to share, and topics people indicate they would like to see addressed.

Time	Activity	Facilitators
	Wednesday February 18, 2026
1:00 PM	Welcome Introductions Plan for the afternoon	Greg Hislop
1:15 PM	Team Formation and Startup Presentations Adapting the Five Dysfunctions model - Jody Paul Peer Team Model Slides Team Working Agreement - Heidi Ellis Team Creation of Working Agreement In-Class Team Working Agreement Activity TEAMMATES product use - Grant Braught Discussion - Challenges and suggestions Team creation What is the best team size and what affects that choice? How do you form teams? Should students have assigned team roles? Are teams static for the project or do teams change during the course? Can teams fire members? How do you get a team started? How do you know if a team launches successfully? What are warning signs during team launch? What do you expect of a team, and how do you communicate that?	Greg Hislop
2:15 PM	Break	All
2:30 PM	Evaluating and Managing Teams Presentations SPSG Sprint Report and Process - Chad Williams SPSG Structure Guide Sprint Review Ensuring that team members contribute - Fernanda Eliott Slides Studio course grading - Susan Hammond Discussion How do you track and assess team work? How do you assign Individual vs. team credit? How do you deal with managing under-performers? How do you manage teams efficiently? What do you grade - product or process? Do you explicitly teach team-related professional skills?	Heidi Ellis
3:30 PM	Break	All
3:45 PM	Gen AI and Student Software Teams Presentation Perspective on AI use in SE - Stoney Jackson AI assist in exploring a software project - Heidi Ellis Initial Project Exploration Analysis Paper Discussion - See Slides	Stoney Jackson and Heidi Ellis
4:45 PM	Teaching Open Source (TOS): Quick Updates TOS projects TOS Kits POSSE Sharing materials on TeachingOpenSource.org	Karl Wurst and Stoney Jackson
5:00 PM	End