Game Design Techniques for Software Engineering Management Education

Abstract

Software engineering is an area with a wide range of concepts and knowledge, and was therefore organized in a knowledge base by the IEEE, in order to exist a consistent and common understanding to everybody about it, and also to clarify its scope and all the areas to which it is paired. Taking into account such diversity of contents, it is logical that for each one of that concepts, there are teaching techniques that better suit each one, making its education tasks more complex. One way to improve the knowledge capture is through games, serious games in this case. These are mainly intended to improve the capture and gain knowledge by the player, through the motivation and attention to the game aspects that represent the knowledge that is sought. These methods have been proved advantageous compared to more traditional methods. Seen this, we seek to identify patterns and design techniques for these games that best serve the teaching of Software Engineering Management content, taking into account the different techniques and teaching objectives for each of them. We intend to propose a serious games design methodology, using game design patterns and linking them with the learning objectives, reducing the effort in the design and development of those games. The interest of this problem lies in exploring new and better teaching methods for Software Engineering Management, changing the way future generations acquire all this knowledge and experience. The purpose of this research is the development of a semantic map of Software Engineering Management pedagogical and educational goals onto game design patterns.