Embracing change within a university setting is different from industry because our clients are different. In fact, when using XP, we are meeting the demands of two different client/customer groups.
Our student clients take several courses each semester. They devote 20% to 40% of their time to a course on programming, depending on the demands of other courses and the interest level we can maintain in our courses. We assume that students live and breathe solely for our courses, but we are also not surprised that other professors in other departments hold similar views about their courses. Thus, it is difficult for groups of students to meet frequently or for extended periods of time outside of class. The structure of the work students do in our courses varies from traditional lecture to structured (time-constrained) labs, to unstructured group and individual activity in completing assignments. Our XP-based material typically takes more time to prepare and requires us to use XP practices to produce it. |