DevCoach: Supporting Students in Learning the Software Development Life Cycle at Scale with Generative Agents

Supporting novice computer science students in learning the software development life cycle (SDLC) at scale is vital for ensuring the quality of future software systems. However, this presents unique challenges, including the need for effective interactive collaboration and access to diverse skill sets of members in the software development team. To address these problems, we present “DevCoach”, an online system designed to support students learning the SDLC at scale by interacting with generative agents powered by large language models simulating members with different roles in a software development team. Our preliminary user study results reveal that DevCoach improves the experiences and outcomes for students, with regard to learning concepts in SDLC’s “Plan and Design” and “Develop” phases.We aim to use our findings to enhance DevCoach to support the entire SDLC workflow by incorporating additional simulated roles and enabling students to choose their project topics. Future studies will be conducted in an online Software Engineering class at our institution, aiming to explore and inspire the development of intelligent systems that provide comprehensive SDLC learning experiences to students at scale.