Computer-supported cooperative environment for requirements elicitation

As the number of jobs in which shared rather than individual work continues to grow, we are being forced to re-examine the way we teach people to work. This paper suggests that in today's workplace, computer programmers must be adept at both technical as well as cooperative skills. It also suggests that we must be prepared to teach students how to work in collaborative environments. Towards this end, we have developed a computer-supported cooperative problem solving environment designed to teach computer science students to elicit software requirements. We believe that requirements elicitation and cooperative skills are highly interrelated and, as such, can be taught more effectively through the use of a computer-supported cooperative environment. The environment encourages cooperative work and yet provides instructors with the ability to monitor both individual and group performance. From our study of students who used the cooperative interface, we found that subjects were able to learn requirements elicitation techniques and, at the same time, gain valuable experience in working together.< >