Managing Project Teams in an Online Class of 1000+ Students

TL;DR

The paper tackles scaling CS education for online delivery by detailing a decade-long framework to manage 1000+ students across 200+ teams in a project-based course. It presents a multi-faceted approach including student-driven team formation via Ed Discussion, a rigorous dual-professor and TA grading workflow with three milestones, and a large-scale peer feedback system that evaluates 3000+ presentations. Key contributions include structured feedback practices, cross-validated grading to ensure fairness, and proactive conflict management that maintains low intervention rates. The approach demonstrates how online, large-scale CS courses can preserve learning quality, collaboration skills, and rigorous evaluation while enhancing accessibility and scalability.

Abstract

Team projects in Computer Science (CS) help students build collaboration skills, apply theory, and prepare for real-world software development. Online classes present unique opportunities to transform the accessibility of CS education at scale. Still, the geographical distribution of students and staff adds complexity to forming effective teams, providing consistent feedback, and facilitating peer interactions. We discuss our approach of managing, evaluating, and providing constructive feedback to over 200 project teams, comprising 1000+ graduate students distributed globally, two professors, and 25+ teaching assistants. We deployed and iteratively refined this approach over 10 years while offering the Data and Visual Analytics course (CSE 6242) at Georgia Institute of Technology. Our approach and insights can help others striving to make CS education accessible, especially in online and large-scale settings.