Work in progress: Agile Methodologies for Online Software Engineering Education under the Pandemic

The Agile process is the major software development process. It aims at simplicity and efficiency based on team communication. In this paper, we propose Agile methodologies to deliver online Software Engineering classes which heavily depend on group projects. The methodologies are designed to promote students' communication quality when students have difficulties performing a group project with peers, most of whom they never met. With the students' survey results and academic grades, we show the proposed methodologies are highly effective. We also analyze the effectiveness of each methodology: The online chat tool (e.g., discord) and the student's team building activities strongly correlate with academic performance. The results suggest that instructors can detect possible team problems early from these methodologies and provide the proper intervention. We plan to apply the online methodologies for in-person classes and compare the results. It will find the optimum teaching modality to balance in-person and online classes.