TY - GEN
T1 - Social sensitivity and classroom team projects
T2 - 43rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, SIGCSE'12
AU - Bender, Lisa
AU - Walia, Gursimran
AU - Kambhampaty, Krishna
AU - Nygard, Kendall E.
AU - Nygard, Travis E.
PY - 2012
Y1 - 2012
N2 - Team work is the norm in major development projects and industry is continually striving to improve team effectiveness. Researchers have established that teams with high levels of social sensitivity tend to perform well when completing a variety of specific collaborative tasks. Social sensitivity is the personal ability to perceive, understand, and respect the feelings and viewpoints of others, and it is reliably measurable. However, the tasks in recent research have been primarily short term, requiring only hours to finish, whereas major project teams work together for longer durations and on complex tasks. Our claim is that, social sensitivity can be a key component in predicting the performance of teams that carry out major projects. Our goal is to determine if previous research, which was not focused on students or professionals in scientific or technical fields, is germane for people in computing disciplines. This paper reports the results from an empirical study that investigates whether social sensitivity is correlated with the performance of student teams on large semester-long projects. The overall result supports our claim that the team social sensitivity is highly correlated with successful team performance. It suggests, therefore, that educators in computer-related disciplines, as well as computer professionals in the workforce, should take the concept of social sensitivity seriously as an aid or obstacle to productivity.
AB - Team work is the norm in major development projects and industry is continually striving to improve team effectiveness. Researchers have established that teams with high levels of social sensitivity tend to perform well when completing a variety of specific collaborative tasks. Social sensitivity is the personal ability to perceive, understand, and respect the feelings and viewpoints of others, and it is reliably measurable. However, the tasks in recent research have been primarily short term, requiring only hours to finish, whereas major project teams work together for longer durations and on complex tasks. Our claim is that, social sensitivity can be a key component in predicting the performance of teams that carry out major projects. Our goal is to determine if previous research, which was not focused on students or professionals in scientific or technical fields, is germane for people in computing disciplines. This paper reports the results from an empirical study that investigates whether social sensitivity is correlated with the performance of student teams on large semester-long projects. The overall result supports our claim that the team social sensitivity is highly correlated with successful team performance. It suggests, therefore, that educators in computer-related disciplines, as well as computer professionals in the workforce, should take the concept of social sensitivity seriously as an aid or obstacle to productivity.
KW - collaboration
KW - computer science
KW - empirical study
KW - social sensitivity
KW - teams
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84858988427&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84858988427&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/2157136.2157258
DO - 10.1145/2157136.2157258
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84858988427
SN - 9781450310987
T3 - SIGCSE'12 - Proceedings of the 43rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education
SP - 403
EP - 408
BT - SIGCSE'12 - Proceedings of the 43rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education
Y2 - 29 February 2012 through 3 March 2012
ER -