Open AccessDesigning game scenarios for software project management education and assessment
Author(s) -
Calderón Alejandro,
Ruiz Mercedes,
O'Connor Rory V.
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
iet software
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.305
H-Index - 43
eISSN - 1751-8814
pISSN - 1751-8806
DOI - 10.1049/iet-sen.2018.5081
Subject(s) - scope (computer science) , computer science , flexibility (engineering) , usability , game design , software engineering , software project management , software , game testing , strengths and weaknesses , engineering management , process management , human–computer interaction , game design document , game developer , software development , systems engineering , engineering , software construction , philosophy , statistics , mathematics , epistemology , programming language
In recent years, an increasing interest has been observed in the development and use of simulations, serious games (SGs) and gamification strategies to teach software project management (SPM) in a highly practical way. The current SGs for SPM have a quite specific scope, are not able to provide and dynamically change game scenarios during the life of the SG and do not allow teachers to assess students' new skills automatically. These weaknesses led to the development of ProDec, a simulation‐based SG that is able to incorporate SPM real‐life practice. In this study, the authors discuss the use of SGs in SPM education before they describe ProDecAdmin, the game scenario design tool for ProDec. ProDecAdmin provides teachers with an environment for designing the game scenarios for ProDec. Additionally, it helps teachers establish the assessment criteria to automate the students' assessment during the game plays. These functionalities allow ProDec to offer students any game scenario that teachers design and to assess their performance in them. Hence, the tool ProDecAdmin helps the SG ProDec to overcome the lack of flexibility and automatic assessment identified in the current SGs for SPM. This study also outlines the results of the usability evaluation conducted.