SimulES-W: A Collaborative Game to Improve Software Engineering Teaching

Abstract

There is empirical evidence concerning the effectiveness and benefits of game-based learning (GBL). Our mainly interest is to present a tool that can be used to complement teaching software engineering in a motivating and didactic way. . This paper studies the use of a GBL tool called SimulES-W (Simulation in Software Engineering) to teach Software Engineering in an undergraduate engineering program. SimulES-W has three characteristics: it is based on real software cases, it can be customized during the learning process, and it is a collaborative game. These characteristics are important because they help us understand and propose a new learning scenario, and to research with this the learning processes in their environments According to it, the first characteristic of SimulES-W makes it a motivating and engaging game which brings up cases which usually are only present in real software projects. Thanks to the second characteristic, the educators can use SimuelES-W to customize the education material, and tune the game for specific software engineering courses. The third characteristic is related to the proposed game as activity that involves group discussions and decision making. This paper presents SimulES-W a digital version of SimulES and reports the results of an evaluation from a pedagogical perspective, where game adequacy for teaching a subject and positive potential impact in student’s academic performance are investigated.