Emily Oh Navarro

Problems and Programmers: an educational software engineering card game

Problems and Programmers is an educational card game that we have developed to help teach software engineering. It is based on the observation that students, in a typical software engineering course, gain little practical experience in issues regarding the software process. The underlying problem is time: any course faces the practical constraint of only being able to involve students in at most a few small software development projects. Problems and Programmers overcomes this limitation by providing a simulation of the software process. In playing the game, students become aware of not only general lessons, such as the fact that they must continuously make tradeoffs among multiple potential next steps, but also specific issues such as the fact that inspections improve the quality of code but delay its delivery time. We describe game play of Problems and Programmers, discuss its underlying design, and report on the results of a small experiment in which twenty-eight students played the game.

Software design sketching with calico

Despite the availability of a host of software design notations and associated tools, software developers are known to frequently turn to the whiteboard when faced with a specific design problem. There, they typically engage in an informal form of software design that relies heavily on sketching. However, whereas whiteboards afford flexibility and fluidity, they at the same time limit a designer in only being able to draw and erase content. This paper presents Calico, a novel software design tool that leverages electronic whiteboards to enhance the design experience with explicit support for the creative, exploratory aspects of design. Specifically, Calico offers a grid, scraps, and a palette together with gesture-based input to address several natural behaviors exhibited by software designers, including frequent shifts in focus, use of low-detail models, and use of a mix of notations. To evaluate Calico, we performed a laboratory experiment involving eight pairs of graduate students and collected and analyzed six corporate design sessions that employed Calico. Results are promising and indicate the benefits of Calico, while they at the same time highlight several ways in which it can be enhanced.

Comprehensive Evaluation of an Educational Software Engineering Simulation Environment

Software engineering educational approaches are often evaluated only anecdotally, or in informal pilot studies. We describe a more comprehensive approach to evaluating a software engineering educational technique (SimSE, a graphical, interactive, customizable, game-based software engineering simulation environment). Our method for evaluating SimSE went above and beyond anecdotal experience and approached evaluation from a number of different angles through a family of studies designed to assess SimSEs effectiveness and guide its development. In this paper, we demonstrate the insights and lessons that can be gained when using such a multi-angled evaluation approach. Our hope is that, from this paper, educators will: (1) learn ideas about how to more comprehensively evaluate their own approaches, and (2) be provided with evidence about the educational effectiveness of SimSE.

Multi-site evaluation of SimSE

In this paper, we describe a multi-site evaluation of SimSE, an educational software engineering simulation game. This study was designed to build on our previous experience of evaluating SimSE in courses and controlled lab settings at UC Irvine, in order to validate our findings and discover any factors that come into play when SimSE is used in other institutions. The study consisted of three different universities using SimSE in their respective courses and reporting the results to us. The results confirmed several of our previous findings, as well as highlighted a number of critical considerations that must be taken into account when using SimSE in a course.

Software process modeling for an educational software engineering simulation game

SimSE is an educational software engineering simulation game that uses a unique software process modeling approach. This approach combines both predictive and prescriptive aspects to support the creation of dynamic, interactive, graphical models for software engineering process education. This article describes the different constructs in a SimSE process model, introduces the associated model-builder tool, describes how we built an initial model of a waterfall process, and discusses the underlying trade-offs and issues involved in our approach. Copyright