Alejandro Calderón

A systematic literature review on serious games evaluation

Training that future practitioners receive in software project management is a topic of great importance. The objective of this systematic literature review is to summarize the current state of the art of the different methods and procedures used to assess serious games. The review follows a predefined procedure that involves automatically searching well-known digital databases. 1199 papers were found by the automatic searches in the digital databases and 102 papers were selected as primary studies. The process was complemented with manual searches using author and backward snowballing techniques. Our systematic literature review identified the main methods followed to assess serious games, the application domains in which the assessments took place, the categories of serious games assessed, the main features considered to assess the educational effectiveness of serious games, the procedures followed for the assessments and the size of the population that participated in the assessments. The results are useful to researchers and practitioners willing to assess serious games in different fields, but specially to those interested in assessing serious games in the area of software project management. We present a systematic literature review on serious games (SG) evaluation.We summarize the different methods and procedures used to assess SG.We observe the application domains and the categories of SG assessed.We identify the main methods, features, procedures and size of population to assess SG.Results are intended to be applied in the area of SG in software project management.

Coverage of ISO/IEC 12207 Software Lifecycle Process by a Simulation-Based Serious Game

Software process is a very important area of knowledge that supports software development. However, we can observe a lack of methods and tools that allow teaching software process in a highly practical way and attached to the software development learning. In this paper, we analyze the software lifecycle process groups of the ISO/IEC 12207 and the current application of serious games and gamification techniques within the software process education scope. Moreover, we propose a simulation-based serious game for software project management teaching that can be used, at the same time, to educate learners in software process. The paper also maps the stages of the game lifecycle to the software lifecycle processes of the ISO/IEC 12207. Ten experts from the educational field have evaluated the idea of using the proposed serious game for software process education concluding that it helps learners acquire practical knowledge not only in the project management area but in the software process scope.

A multivocal literature review on serious games for software process standards education

Abstract Context: The interest in the use of serious games as learning resources for software process standards education and training has increased significantly in recent years. Objective: The main purpose of this work is to record, analyze and characterize the state of the art related to serious games for software process standards education with the goal of identifying the current serious games in terms of the scope, their main features and the perceived benefits of integrating them in software process education, as well as, identifying new research opportunities. Method: The study was conducted as a multivocal literature review that follows a predefined procedure in which studies from the scientific and grey literature are analyzed. Results: A new selection process within the search strategy was defined to conduct this review. 190 papers were retrieved from the literature and 7 papers were selected as primary studies. Our multivocal literature review identified six different serious games for software process education, at the same time analyzed the main methods used to assess them as well as their main outcomes as learning resources. Conclusion: The results of this review reveal that serious games have potential as supporting tools for software process standards education, but that more research and experimental outcomes are needed in order to observe the full potential of serious games as learning resources.

Coverage of ISO/IEC 29110 Project Management Process of Basic Profile by a Serious Game

The ISO/IEC 29110 standard aims to assist and encourage Very Small Entities (VSEs) in understanding, adopting, assessing and improving their software processes to their specific needs. Although the integration of international software standards in VSEs is a relevant topic, the learning/teaching process is a considerable challenge for industrial trainers, practitioners and VSEs. In this paper, we analyze the Project Management process of the Basic Profile of the ISO/IEC 29110 and propose a simulation-based serious game for supporting the learning/teaching process of the standard. The paper provides a mapping between the different stages of the game lifecycle and the Project Management process of the standard. Moreover, we present the results of a preliminary study to assess the idea of using the proposed serious game for supporting software process education, which allows getting initial positive evidence about the potential of the game for helping to understand the Project Management process of the standard.

ProDecAdmin: A Game Scenario Design Tool for Software Project Management Training

Teaching Software Project Management (SPM) for Information Technology (IT) learners is a relevance issue. The necessity of teaching SPM in a highly practical way moves trainers towards the use of new methods and techniques such as simulations, serious games or gamification strategies. The majority of the existing serious games for SPM do not offer flexibility, in terms of the ability to provide and dynamically change game scenarios during the life of the serious game, and not allow assessing learners’ new skill automatically. In this paper, we introduce the administration tool of the serious game ProDec, that allow trainers to design the game scenarios of the game trying to overcome the lacks found in the scope of serious games for SPM.

MEdit4CEP-Gam: A model-driven approach for user-friendly gamification design, monitoring and code generation in CEP-based systems

Abstract Context Gamification has been proven to increase engagement and motivation in multiple and different non-game contexts such as healthcare, education, workplace, and marketing, among others. However, many of these applications fail to achieve the desired benefits of gamification, mainly because of a poor design. Objective This paper explores the conceptualization, implementation and monitoring phases of meaningful gamification strategies and proposes a solution for strategy experts that hides the implementation details and helps them focus only on what is crucial for the success of the strategy. The solution makes use of Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) and Complex Event Processing (CEP) technology. Method An easy-to-use graphical editor is used to provide the high-level models that represent the design of the gamification strategy and its deployment and monitoring. These models contain the event pattern definitions to be automatically transformed into code. This code is then deployed both in a CEP engine to detect the conditions expressed in such patterns and in an enterprise service bus to execute the corresponding pattern actions. Results The paper reports on the use of both a graphical modeling editor for gamification domain definition and a graphical modeling editor for gamification strategy design, monitoring and code generation in event-based systems. It also shows how the proposal can be used to design and automate the implementation and monitoring of a gamification strategy in an educational domain supported by a well-known Learning Management System (LMS) such as Moodle. Conclusion It can be concluded that this unprecedented model-driven approach leveraging gamification and CEP technology provides strategy experts with the ability to graphically define gamification strategies, which can be directly transformed into code executable by event-based systems. Therefore, this is a novel solution for bringing CEP closer to any strategy expert, positively influencing the gamification strategy design, implementation and real-time monitoring processes.

Coverage of the ISO 21500 Standard in the Context of Software Project Management by a Simulation-Based Serious Game

Bringing professional practice into the learning/teaching process is an especially difficult task in the scope of software project management and can turn into a challenge in the context of software process standards education. The ISO 21500 standard is an international reference standard that provides generic guidance and good practices in project management. In this paper, we perform a literature review in order to analyze the current studies related to the use of serious games for understanding, teaching and supporting the education of the ISO 21500 standard. Moreover, we propose ProDec, a serious game for software project management training, and provide a mapping between the different stages of the game lifecycle and the ISO 21500 standard applying its management processes in the context of software projects. As a result, we observe that in this context, ProDec is able to cover seven of the ten subject groups and almost 75% of the project management processes of the ISO 21500 standard.

Gamification and Functional Prototyping to Support Motivation Towards Software Process Improvement

The topic of commitment in software process improvement (SPI) has been a recurrent topic of research that has not received enough attention in the recent years. In many situations, the lack of commitment in SPI initiatives is appointed as the major cause leading to failure. In this paper, we propose the use of simulation-based process functional prototyping as a tool to design and test SPI initiatives in a risk-free environment together with gamification, as a means to boost motivation and commitment. The paper shows the conceptualization of the proposal and the design of the gamification strategy, describes the tools built at the technical implementation of the strategy and summarizes the main results of a pilot study conducted to initially evaluate the proposal.

Towards a Standard to Describe and Classify Serious Games as Learning Resources for Software Project Management.

In recent years, there have been an increasing number of new serious games in many fields such as health, science, government and education. It is desirable to describe and classify these new serious games as learning resources with the aim to facilitate its use in education and integration in the learning process. The goal of this work is to analyze a commonly used evaluation method to describe, classify and assess the suitability of serious games for use in software project management education. As a proof of concept, we have applied the proposed evaluation method to assess and analyze the strengths and weaknesses of a serious game regarding its pedagogical, playful and technical features. The outcomes of the evaluation have allowed us to identify the main features needed to design an evaluation method to describe, classify and assess the ability of serious games to be used in software project management education.

Teaching Software Processes and Standards: A Review of Serious Games Approaches

Software process education is an important field within software engineering that requires a more practical and realistic, learning and teaching approach. In the context of education, serious games is a field that is growing rapidly as a way to provide alternative approaches to the traditional pedagogical learning/teaching process. The main objective of this work is to analyze the state of the art in relation to serious games for software process education with the aim to identify the current studies and existing serious games that deal with this field. A systematic literature review was performed following a predefined procedure that involves automatically searching in scientific digital databases. 152 papers were found by the automatic searches in the digital databases and 24 papers were selected as primary studies. Results show that researchers are more interested in addressing the design and use of serious games for software process education than the design of simulation models to support the design of serious games for software process education. Consequently, 21 serious games for software process education were identified and categorized.