Students as Partners and Students as Mentors: An Educational Model for Quality Assurance in Global Software Development

Since 2005, Pace University in New York City has been collaborating with the Institute of Technology of Cambodia and the University of Delhi in India to bring students together to work on globally distributed software development projects. Over this period, we have been exploring models through which graduates and undergraduates from the three countries can work together as partners and mentors, with pedagogical value to all sides. In 2007, we converged on using the critical activity of Software Quality Assurance as a focal point around which to establish a partnering and mentoring relationship. We included seven students from the Masters Program in Software Design and Engineering at Pace University to help assure the quality of what was to be a single distributed project involving twenty-seven students from across three global locations. A team of these graduates acted as internal quality assurance mentors for the US undergraduates and another team acted as external quality assurance auditors for the overall project. To further focus on quality, requirements and testing activities were emphasized throughout the duration of the project. The motivation, logistics and experiences from this project are reported in this paper, and lessons of wider applicability to educational and industrial practice are provided.