Effectiveness of Games in Software Project Management Education: An Experimental Study

Software Project Management (SPM) is considered important to ensure that software projects are delivered with success, with respect to project scope, time, cost and quality requirements. However, teaching SPM remains a challenging issue. In this context, educational games have been used in order to provide more practical opportunities in SPM education. Yet, there is a lack of studies with more rigorous research design in order to analyse the real effectiveness of such games. The objective of this study is to analyse the effectiveness of educational games with respect to the students' experience and learning in SPM education. An experimental study is conducted in two SPM courses, involving an experimental group, adopting games; and a control group, using traditional exercises. The results indicate that games provide a positive contribution to the students' perceived learning, as well as provide an engaging experience, mainly in terms of challenge, social interaction, fun and focused attention. Yet, no indication that the games provide a better learning effect than exercises could be identified, although the results show an increase in the students' performance over time playing the games. Results of this study may assist instructors to select such games and contribute to their adoption for SPM education

Decoupling assessment and serious games to support guided exploratory learning in smart education

This research proposes an enhanced approach of decoupling assessment and serious games to support fire evacuation training in smart education. The proposed assessment approach employs an evidence-based dynamic assessment and feedback to guide players through school’s building evacuation. Experimentation results show the applicability of the proposed assessment approach in enhancing fire evacuation training using serious games. Moreover, students were engaged to the proposed learning scenarios and their overall fire evacuation assessment were enhanced using the guided exploratory game-based training