Effectiveness if traditional games compared with technological games in classroom climate and student's performance in the EFL classroom : a quasi-experimental research

Tesis (Pedagogía en Inglés)The present study intended to corroborate the hypothesis that both technological and traditional games can help school students in their learning process and that traditional games unlike technological ones, also help in the creation of a better classroom climate. Through a quasi-experiment in three different educational settings, control groups and experimental ones were going to be measured both in students’ performance expressed in marks and in classroom climate measured with a sociometric test. Chile’s current national contingency has prevented this study to be concluded as expected. As an alternative outcome, the researchers carried out a perception study that compared student’s acceptance of both technological and traditional games. The result of this study shows that current students, who are digital natives, showed a slight preference for traditional games over the technological ones, defying the common belief that students only react positively to technology.El presente estudio pretende corroborar la hipótesis de que tanto los juegos tecnológicos como los tradicionales pueden ayudar a los alumnos en su proceso de aprendizaje y que los juegos tradicionales a diferencia de los tecnológicos pueden ayudar, además en la creación de un mejor clima de aula. A través de un cuasi-experimento en tres diferentes establecimientos educacionales, en los grupo de control y experimentales se iba a medir tanto el rendimiento de los estudiantes expresado a través de sus calificaciones, como el clima de aula medido a través de un cuestionario sociométrico. La actual contingencia nacional de Chile ha impedido que este estudio concluya según lo previsto. Como alternativa, los investigadores llevaron a cabo un estudio de percepción que comparó la aceptación de los estudiantes hacia los juegos tecnológicos y tradicionales. El resultado de este estudio muestra que los estudiantes, siendo nativos digitales. mostraron una ligera preferencia por los juegos tradicionales por sobre los tecnológicos, desafiando la creencia general de que los estudiantes solo reaccionan positivamente ante la tecnología

Are team personality and climate related to satisfaction and software quality? Aggregating results from a twice replicated experiment

This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Information and Software Technology. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Information and Software Technology, [VOL 57, (2015)] DOI 10.1016/j.infsof.2014.09.002Context Research into software engineering teams focuses on human and social team factors. Social psychology deals with the study of team formation and has found that personality factors and group processes such as team climate are related to team effectiveness. However, there are only a handful of empirical studies dealing with personality and team climate and their relationship to software development team effectiveness. Objective We present aggregate results of a twice replicated quasi-experiment that evaluates the relationships between personality, team climate, product quality and satisfaction in software development teams. Method Our experimental study measures the personalities of team members based on the Big Five personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism) and team climate factors (participative safety, support for innovation, team vision and task orientation) preferences and perceptions. We aggregate the results of the three studies through a meta-analysis of correlations. The study was conducted with students. Results The aggregation of results from the baseline experiment and two replications corroborates the following findings. There is a positive relationship between all four climate factors and satisfaction in software development teams. Teams whose members score highest for the agreeableness personality factor have the highest satisfaction levels. The results unveil a significant positive correlation between the extraversion personality factor and software product quality. High participative safety and task orientation climate perceptions are significantly related to quality. Conclusions First, more efficient software development teams can be formed heeding personality factors like agreeableness and extraversion. Second, the team climate generated in software development teams should be monitored for team member satisfaction. Finally, aspects like people feeling safe giving their opinions or encouraging team members to work hard at their job can have an impact on software quality. Software project managers can take advantage of these factors to promote developer satisfaction and improve the resulting product.This research has been funded by the following projects: Experiment Replication and Synthesis Technologies in SE (MICINN TIN2011-23216) and Go Lite (MICINN TIN2011-24139)

Are team personality and climate related to satisfaction and software quality? Aggregating results from a twice replicated experiment

Research into software engineering teams focuses on human and social team factors. Social psychology deals with the study of team formation and has found that personality factors and group processes such as team climate are related to team effectiveness. However, there are only a handful of empirical studies dealing with personality and team climate and their relationship to software development team effectiveness. Objective We present aggregate results of a twice replicated quasi-experiment that evaluates the relationships between personality, team climate, product quality and satisfaction in software development teams. Method Our experimental study measures the personalities of team members based on the Big Five personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism) and team climate factors (participative safety, support for innovation, team vision and task orientation) preferences and perceptions. We aggregate the results of the three studies through a meta-analysis of correlations. The study was conducted with students. Results The aggregation of results from the baseline experiment and two replications corroborates the following findings. There is a positive relationship between all four climate factors and satisfaction in software development teams. Teams whose members score highest for the agreeableness personality factor have the highest satisfaction levels. The results unveil a significant positive correlation between the extraversion personality factor and software product quality. High participative safety and task orientation climate perceptions are significantly related to quality. Conclusions First, more efficient software development teams can be formed heeding personality factors like agreeableness and extraversion. Second, the team climate generated in software development teams should be monitored for team member satisfaction. Finally, aspects like people feeling safe giving their opinions or encouraging team members to work hard at their job can have an impact on software quality. Software project managers can take advantage of these factors to promote developer satisfaction and improve the resulting product

Project Quality of Offshore Virtual Teams Engaged in Software Requirements Analysis: An Exploratory Comparative Study

The off-shore software development companies in countries such as India use a global delivery model in which initial requirement analysis phase of software projects get executed at client locations to leverage frequent and deep interaction between user and developer teams. Subsequent phases such as design, coding and testing are completed at off-shore locations. Emerging trends indicate an increasing interest in off-shoring even requirements analysis phase using computer mediated communication. We conducted an exploratory research study involving students from Management Development Institute (MDI), India and Marquette University (MU), USA to determine quality of such off-shored requirements analysis projects. Our findings suggest that project quality of teams engaged in pure off-shore mode is comparable to that of teams engaged in collocated mode. However, the effect of controls such as user project monitoring on the quality of off-shored projects needs to be studied further

Replications of software engineering experiments

There are many open issues that must be addressed before the replication process can be successfully formalized in empirical software engineering research. We define replication as the deliberate repetition of the same empirical study for the purpose of determining whether the results of the first experiment can be reproduced. This definition would appear at first glance to be good. However, it needs several clarifications that have not yet been forthcoming in software engineering: – What is the exact meaning of the same empirical study? Namely how similar should an experiment be to the baseline study for it to be considered a replication? What is the exact meaning of a result being reproduced? Namely how similar does a result have to be to the result of the baseline study for it to be considered reproduced? These and other methodological questions need to be researched and tailored for empirical software engineering

Eye quietness and quiet eye in expert and novice golf performance: an electrooculographic analysis

Quiet eye (QE) is the final ocular fixation on the target of an action (e.g., the ball in golf putting). Camerabased eye-tracking studies have consistently found longer QE durations in experts than novices; however, mechanisms underlying QE are not known. To offer a new perspective we examined the feasibility of measuring the QE using electrooculography (EOG) and developed an index to assess ocular activity across time: eye quietness (EQ). Ten expert and ten novice golfers putted 60 balls to a 2.4 m distant hole. Horizontal EOG (2ms resolution) was recorded from two electrodes placed on the outer sides of the eyes. QE duration was measured using a EOG voltage threshold and comprised the sum of the pre-movement and post-movement initiation components. EQ was computed as the standard deviation of the EOG in 0.5 s bins from –4 to +2 s, relative to backswing initiation: lower values indicate less movement of the eyes, hence greater quietness. Finally, we measured club-ball address and swing durations. T-tests showed that total QE did not differ between groups (p = .31); however, experts had marginally shorter pre-movement QE (p = .08) and longer post-movement QE (p < .001) than novices. A group × time ANOVA revealed that experts had less EQ before backswing initiation and greater EQ after backswing initiation (p = .002). QE durations were inversely correlated with EQ from –1.5 to 1 s (rs = –.48 - –.90, ps = .03 - .001). Experts had longer swing durations than novices (p = .01) and, importantly, swing durations correlated positively with post-movement QE (r = .52, p = .02) and negatively with EQ from 0.5 to 1s (r = –.63, p = .003). This study demonstrates the feasibility of measuring ocular activity using EOG and validates EQ as an index of ocular activity. Its findings challenge the dominant perspective on QE and provide new evidence that expert-novice differences in ocular activity may reflect differences in the kinematics of how experts and novices execute skills

How personality traits are interrelated with team climate and team performance in software engineering?: a preliminary study

Personality and its impacts on team processes in the domain of software engineering have been an area of investigation for many researchers since the last many years. However, personality traits and its effects on team climate and team performance were not being focused as area of research. In our previous research, we had performed a systematic literature review on team climate and team productivity. In progression of our earlier work in this paper, we have extended the work and take personality traits as an independent variable over team climate and performance. This paper reports the results of preliminary data survey, which has been conducted to measure the effects of personality on team climate and team performance. Results show the strong and positive correlation among personality factor Extraversion, team climate and team performance variables

Learning during the New Financial Service Innovation Process: Antecedents and Performance Effects

This article theoretically and empirically examines the antecedents and consequences of project learning during the new financial service innovation process. We analyze the impact of project learning on project performance and performance of the financial institution. Next we investigate the antecedent role of the nature of communication and organizational design on project learning. Following the development of a propositional framework, a survey research has been developed within the Belgian banking industry. Our research findings indicate that the level of project learning contributes to the corporate reputation of the financial institution. Moreover, learning during project innovation enhances the cost and the competitive position of the innovating bank. Our study empirically supports the crucial influence of management support, harmonious cross-functional interfaces, organizational diversity and participative decision-making on the level of project learning. Both innovative and coordinative communication are needed to balance the information needs throughout the innovation process. However, our findings underline the fact that the impact of innovative communication on the level of project learning is contingent upon the quality of the planning stage. The up-front activities of the innovation process seem to have an important leveraging effect on learning, and hence on project and bank performance.Economics ;