Rafael Savi’s research while affiliated with Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina and other places

Game-based learning has gained attention as it can effectively reinforce concepts and contribute to teach higher-cognitive competencies while at the same time making learning fun. Teaching project management competencies can also benefit from games by simulating lifelike situations. We present a game to reinforce earned value management (EVM) concepts and to teach their application – an important competency for project managers. The game is designed as an investigation, in which students analyse data and status reports, calculate EVM indicators and interpret them in order to identify what went wrong in a fictitious software project. The game has been developed based on theory and teaching experience and has been applied in undergraduate computing programmes. First results indicate its potential to support learning effectively and efficiently on the cognitive levels of remembering, understanding and application. The game also has shown to be engaging, offering the possibility to complement traditional strategies.

Due to the increasing use of agile methods, teaching SCRUM as an agile project management methodology has become more and more important. In order to teach students to be able to apply SCRUM in concrete situations, often educational (simulation) games are used. However, most of these games have been developed more for professional trainings than taking into consideration typical restrictions of university courses (such as, class duration and low financial resources for instructional materials). Therefore, we present a manual paper and pencil game to reinforce and teach the application of SCRUM in undergraduate computing programmes complementing theoretical lectures. The game has been developed following a systematic instructional design process and based on our teaching experience. It has been applied several times in two undergraduate project management courses. We evaluated motivation, user experience and the game's contribution to learning through case studies on Kirkpatrick's level one based on the perception of the students. First results indicate the potential of the game to contribute to the learning of SCRUM in an engaging way, keeping students immersed in the learning task. In this regard, the game offers a low-budget alternative to complement traditional instructional strategies for teaching SCRUM in the classroom.

Context: To meet the growing need for education in Software Project Management, educational games have been introduced as a beneficial instructional strategy. However, there are no low-cost board games openly available to teach Earned Value Management (EVM) in computing programs. Objective: This paper presents an educational board game to reinforce and teach the application of EVM concepts in the context of undergraduate computing programs complementing expository lessons on EVM basics. Method: The game has been developed based on project management fundamentals and teaching experience in this area. So far, it has been applied in two project management courses in undergraduate computing programs at the Federal University of Santa Catarina. We evaluated motivation, user experience and the game's contribution to learning through case studies on Kirkpatrick's level one based on the perception of the students. Results: First results of the evaluation of the game indicate a perceived potential of the game to contribute to the learning of EVM concepts and their application. The results also point out a very positive effect of the game on social interaction, engagement, immersion, attention and relevance to the course objectives. Conclusion: We conclude that the game DELIVER! can contribute to the learning of the EVM on the cognitive levels of remembering, understanding and application. The illustration of the application of EVM through the game can motivate its usefulness. The game has proven to be an engaging instructional strategy, keeping students on the task and attentive. In this respect, the game offers a possibility to complement traditional instructional strategies for teaching EVM. In order to further generalize and to strengthen the validity of the results, it is important to obtain further evaluations.

Teaching software engineering through educational games is expected to have several benefits. Various games have already been developed in this context, yet there is still a lack of assessment models to measure the real benefits and quality of these educational resources. This article presents the development of a model for assessing the quality of educational games for teaching software engineering. The model has been systematically derived from literature and evaluated in terms of its applicability, usefulness, validity and reliability through a series of case studies, applying educational board games in software engineering courses. Early results indicate that the model can be used to assess the aspects of motivation, user experience and learning of educational SE games.

Este artigo apresenta e propõe um modelo para a avaliação de jogos educacionais baseado no modelo de avaliação de programas de treinamento de Kirkpatrick, nas estratégias motivacionais do modelo ARCS de Keller, na área de experiência do usuário e na taxonomia de objetivos educacionais de Bloom. A estrutura do modelo e um questionário para a coleta de dados com base da percepção dos alunos são apresentados. Espera-se que este modelo possa trazer contribuições para a qualidade de jogos educacionais e a orientar professores na seleção e uso deste tipo de material educacional.

As instituições de ensino estão ampliando o uso das tecnologias deinformação e comunicação para oferecer aos alunos mídias interativas que possamenriquecer as aulas. Os jogos digitais aparecem nesse contexto como um recursodidático que contém características que podem trazer uma série de benefícios para aspráticas de ensino e aprendizagem. Este artigo apresenta o potencial dos jogos digitaiseducacionais, baseado em estudos de especialistas, trás exemplos de jogos utilizados emdiferentes níveis de ensino e aponta problemas que ainda precisam ser superados parafacilitar o emprego dos jogos digitais educacionais.

Resumo: Este trabalho irá apresentar e descrever a experiência do "Projeto Classificação de Software Livre Educativo" (CLASSE), desenvolvido pelo Centro GeNESS da Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, em parceria com a Escola Estadual Básica Simão José Hess, em Florianópolis/SC e financiado pelo Fundo Regional para a Inovação Digital na América Latina e Caribe (FRIDA -http://programafrida.net/pt). Este documento irá descrever o ambiente e os processos envolvidos na execução do projeto, e explicitará as ferramentas disponibilizadas à comunidade escolar. A princípio serão apresentados os antecedentes do projeto e o ambiente de trabalho, e em seguida o relato da experiência de trabalho junto aos docentes e discentes da instituição escolar. Palavras-chave: educação, software livre, softwares educativos, jogos eletrônicos educacionais.

As part of the research project 15504MPE, an assessment method with the objective of process improvement adapted to small brazilian software companies based on the standard ISO/IEC 15504 is being developed. The objective of the customization is to facilitate the application of 15504 also in small software companies in order to enable quality and productivity improvement. The method includes an adapted and enhanced assessment model based on the ISO 15504 exemplar model. In addition, the assessment process has been adapted and refined in order to satisfy the specific requirements of small software companies and been detailed in order to provide ready support. Various assessments in small software companies were performed as a basis for the development of the method and, initiating the validation of the method, so far, one pilot assessment has been performed. 1

This paper describes some experiences gained from applying ISO/IEC 15504 for software process assessments focusing on process improvement in four small software companies in Brazil. The assessments have been realized in the context of the research project 15504MPE, which aims at the development of a customized assessment method based on the standard ISO/IEC 15504 adapted to small brazilian software companies. The paper reports some of our experiences regarding the application of the standard especially to this kind of company. Costs and benefits related to the assessments are also presented. 1

In order to operate successfully, an incubator must count on people involved with its operation that work with efficient operational and management models to ensure the quality of the incubation process. This paper presents a proposal for technological enterprise incubator management, guided by processes and based on ISO/IEC 15504, witch is an international standard used to assess organizational processes. The ISO/IEC 15504 can be used for quality improvements, but needs customizations to be applied on enterprise incubators. These customizations are the objectives of the present study, witch is part of a larger project that will be presented at Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina as master degree thesis at the knowledge engineering and management postgraduate program.