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

Origami: An Active Learning Exercise for Scrum Project Management

Scrum is a popular project management model for iterative delivery of software that subscribes to Agile principles. This paper describes an origami active learning exercise to teach the principles of Scrum in management information systems courses. The exercise shows students how Agile methods respond to changes in requirements during project implementation, one of the four Agile principles, in a deeper manner than many Agile active learning exercises. This learning activity uses an uncommon approach in Agile exercises in that tasks are provided, estimates made, progress is measured, and pivots to new tasks can be introduced based on task progress. All students were introduced to Scrum through two different lessons – one lecture-focused and one activity-focused. Students were surveyed after each lesson to determine lesson effectiveness. Students indicated they understood Agile concepts after completing the exercise and found the activity engaging. Students’ perceptions of Agile were similar for both lecture and activity lessons. The results from the study find that students’ perception of Agile learning increased when they had the lecture followed by the activity. If class time is constrained to a single lesson then the activity would be more beneficial than the lecture. Detailed instructions are provided for instructors to complete this activity

Bender – An Educational Game for Teaching Agile Hardware Development

Within this paper, an educational game is presented that transfers Agile principles for the development of physical systems. The training leverages elements of Learning Factories (LF) to simulate an Agile hardware development project within two days. By doing so, the challenges of applying Agile within the hardware domain are realistically reflected. The training revolves around a physical wire bending machine, which a development team of four participants needs to modify within a realistic engineering and production setting. A trial with mechanical engineering students was conducted to validate the training design. The participants showed a positive attitude towards the active learning approach. Furthermore, the students expressed that they perceived the game to improve their learning regarding Agile hardware development

Teaching agile hardware development with an open‐source engineering simulator: An evaluation with industry participants

Educational games are increasingly used to teach Agile development approaches to practitioners. Most of these training modules simplify the development environment, for example, by using LEGO bricks or playing cards. This oversimplification has been shown to result in limited transferability of learning to industrial practice. Furthermore, there is a lack of teaching modules that specifically address the challenges of applying Agile to physical products. In this paper, we present an open-source educational game that realistically simulates a hardware development project to teach Agile principles. Over 2 days, participants design, manufacture, and test modifications for a physical wire bending machine within an authentic engineering and production setting. The training mimics the typical roles, processes, and tools of industrial engineering teams to reflect the challenges of Agile hardware development. The module was evaluated with 44 industry professionals regarding perceived learning and user reaction. A combination of quantitative and qualitative methods was used for the experimental evaluation. The results showed a positive learning effect as the participants\u27 average agreement with Agile principles increased through the training. Concerning user reaction, respondents reported a high degree of relevance, interaction, and confidence, indicating that the realistic simulation of the hardware development appropriately balanced the degree of realism with simplicity. The study showcases the opportunities of properly aligning game components to provoke learning situations targeted by the instructors. It contributes to the extant literature by providing a design framework (product, process, setting, and instruction) and open-source access to the tools used for implementation

Agile in Teaching and Learning: Conceptual Framework and Research Agenda

Agile software development methods are widespread in industry, and there is a wealth of academic research and practitioner publications currently available from this perspective. With the rise of Agile within companies worldwide, it is increasingly important for information systems education to keep up with this trend to ensure curriculum and courses are up-to-date. Students in the computing disciplines must be prepared to enter a job market where Agile is commonplace. As such, the topic of Agile in teaching and learning is critically important. The current special issue includes a rich collection of articles providing information systems educators with research-based, practical approaches for both teaching Agile (“the what”) and using Agile as a pedagogical approach (“the how”). In an effort to assist information systems educators categorize the growing amount of literature related to Agile in teaching and learning, a conceptual framework is provided which places the literature along the two axes of pedagogy (“the how”) and the content (“the what”) ranging from other, non-Agile to Agile. Finally, the authors present a call for future research integrating Agile on a meta-level in the course development process. We hope that this special issue inspires educators and researchers to consider integrating Agile into their teaching and learning

GLOBAL-MANAGER: A Serious Game for Providing Training in Project Manager Skills

The emergence of Global Software Development (GSD) has led to certain difficulties in the life cycle of global projects, in addition to the traditional challenges of collocated development, particularly as regards Project Management (PM). These difficulties are caused by the geographical, linguistic and cultural distance among the members of the team, signifying that the project manager requires special skills with which to mitigate these issues. Bearing this in mind, this paper describes a serious game (SG), denominated as GLOBAL-MANAGER, whose objective is to provide training in the management of GSD projects. The game attempts to develop several skills in its players whilst simultaneously providing them with an immersive, pleasant and attractive experience. The skills developed are related to coordination, communication and control, which are three of the principal challenges in GSD

Qualidade de jogos digitais e não digitais utilizados para o ensino de engenharia de software no Brasil

Educational games have been used as an innovative strategy for Software Engineering (SE) education in Brazil. However, it is essential to evaluate such games in order to obtain sound evidence on their quality. Thus, the objective of this article is to summarize empirical evidence on the quality of digital and non-digital games used for teaching SE in Brazil. The analysis is based on data collected from 41 case studies that used Meega, the most used model for the evaluation of educational games, evaluating 19 games, involving a population of 704 students. The results indicate that digital and non-digital games can have a positive effect on learning by providing a pleasant and engaging experience for students and motivating them to study. These results can guide instructors in the selection of games as instructional methods and guide game creators toward developing new educational games.Key words: quality evaluation, educational games, software engineering.Os jogos educacionais têm sido utilizados como uma estratégia inovadora para o ensino de Engenharia de Software (ES) no Brasil. No entanto, é essencial avaliar estes jogos para obter evidências sobre a sua qualidade. Diante disso, o objetivo deste artigo é sintetizar evidências empíricas sobre a qualidade dos jogos digitais e não-digitais utilizados para o ensino de ES no Brasil. A análise baseia-se em dados coletados de 41 estudos de caso que utilizam o Meega, o modelo mais utilizado para a avaliação de jogos educacionais, avaliando 19 jogos, envolvendo uma população de 704 alunos. Os resultados indicam evidências de que os jogos digitais e não-digitais podem contribuir para a aprendizagem, proporcionando uma experiência agradável e envolvente aos alunos e motivando-os ao estudo. Esses resultados podem orientar instrutores na seleção de jogos como métodos instrucionais e guiar criadores de jogos em relação ao desenvolvimento de novos jogos educacionais.Palavras-chave: avaliação da qualidade, jogos educacionais, engenharia de software

A study on the effectiveness of a board game as a training tool for project management

Nowadays, games have become one of the useful tools in training.Many instructors and educators have chosen to use games to enhance the way of delivering the course content.An effective game will help the student to understand the concept quickly and get involve in experiential learning. The student can manage and solve the problem as in the actual situation.This study will focus on the effectiveness of board game as a training tool for project management.Two test methods were used in this study which arepilot-test and post-test. These methods were chosen to analyze the effectiveness of using TASKMANAGER Board Game as a teaching tool in increasing the student's comprehension and understanding of the concepts and strategies in project management.Three sub-components assessed were motivation, user experience and learning using Kirkpatrick's level one training evaluation based on the perception of the students.The result obtained indicated that the use of TASKMANAGER board game as a training tool for managing project has a positive impact on student’s learning.It helps students to experience the situation of managing projects to improve their time management, human resource and communication skill

Implementation of a risk management simulation tool

Risk management is an essential part of project management. Proactive management of risk in projects helps increase the success rate of projects and the reduction of potential costs. The paper presents a new tool for implementing the risk management process in projects. The tool allows participants to understand a project further, and to analyse risks in a project using various methods such as risk exposure and Monte Carlo method. From the results of the study, the tool helps in improving the understanding and implementation of risk management in projects. The tool implementation and results are discussed in this paper