Software process improvement programs are partly founded on software measurement. However, despite their importance, it has been pointed out in the literature that many students are leaving the academic world without the necessary skills to conduct this kind of process. This can be understood by people’s attitudes to this process which is regarded as time-consuming and difficult to understand—factors that explain the lack of interest in it during a student’s academic life. In light of this, the application of serious games or gamification can show useful alternative ways of meeting this need, because the strategies they involve are well accepted by students and have a motivational and engaging effect on them. The objective of this work is to discover different approaches to the teaching of software measurement and software process improvement through gamification projects and serious games. This involves carrying out a systematic review of the literature, which is aimed at characterizing the state-of-the-art on the use of methods related to gamification and serious games in the abovementioned subjects. We conducted a systematic review of the literature to identify primary studies that address the use, planning, or evaluation of gamification, serious games, their features, and game mechanics in software engineering. We located 137 primary studies, published between 2000 and 2019. Although the use of serious games and gamification in software engineering is not recent, there still remains a large area to be explored, especially in software process improvement and software measurement. The study expands and advances the research on how serious games and gamification proposals can be used for teaching software measurement in the context of software process improvement programs by conducting a systematic review of the literature.

Software testing is regarded as a key activity in the software development cycle, as it helps information technology professionals to design good quality software. Thus, this is an essential activity for the software industry, although with all its nuances high priority is still not being given to learning about it at an academic level. The purpose of this work is to investigate a teaching strategy for software testing which involves acquiring academic skills within a curriculum based on active teaching methodologies. A teaching model was designed for this to coordinate the different areas of a subject, and then a controlled quasi-experiment was carried out in a post-graduate course to evaluate the application of this model. The results obtained demonstrate that there was a considerable learning gain in the experimental group that adopted the teaching approach when compared with the control group that relied on a traditional approach. The student t-test was employed to determine the learning efficiency.

Um Modelo Iterativo para o Ensino de Engenharia de Software Baseado em Abordagens Focadas no Aluno

Background: Exploratory testing has been used in the industry mainly to meet the needs of agile testing processes. In an agile scenario, this testing approach is important to facilitate changes constantly, which helps agile projects successfully. One of the ways to achieve success more easily is if the test process follows guides that provide structured activities. Problem Analysis: In this context, some studies have identified that software engineering does not understand how to apply exploratory testing approaches in a systematic way, involving both design and execution activities. After a review of the literature, it has been noticed that professionals performing exploratory testing focus only on execution activities. In an academic scenario, the literature review has evidenced that content about exploratory testing is not usually taught, and it is important that the professional acquires enough basic skills to apply it through structured activities. Purpose: In this context, this article presents an analysis and discussion of the results obtained in an experiment that applied a syllabus proposed by the author, using active methodologies to teach the Exploratory Test Design and Execution being applied and testing the approach in a systematic way. The teaching plan elaborated upon and used as part of the syllabus is based on “learning by doing” in an interactive way, that is, providing student-centered teaching in order to make such an approach more beneficial to the student and, conditioning them to obtain the expected competences in the industry. Methods: The strategies to carry out the research were as follows: (i) a review of the literature to identify gaps in the knowledge about activities performed in the exploratory testing process; then, to elaborate upon the syllabus proposed, (ii) equivalence mapping was carried out on some guides and curricula related to the research theme; (iii) a survey was conducted to identify the tools, techniques, and work products usually used by professionals in the industry; (iv) a teaching plan, based on active methodologies, was produced using the proposed syllabus; (v) then, for the application of this teaching plan in an experiment, a statistical analysis was performed using the two-tailed Student-t approach for independent samples. Results: For this, both groups (experiment and control) were analyzed using the two-tailed Student-t technique, and we noticed that significant statistical gains were reached with the use of the proposed approach, compared to the control group. All participants reported that some basic test concepts, if adopted in their courses, could contribute positively. The participation made them (students) more active in the classes provided by active pedagogical practices, especially when remote teaching was applied; this broke down barriers to communication with their classmates. Conclusion: The results show that the use of active methodologies can provide benefits to the learning of Exploratory Test Design and Execution systems as they allow the application of tools in line with real scenarios observed in software development companies; these results also encourage new studies to explore these ideas further.

A disciplina de algoritmos, nos cursos de Computação, representa a base para a formação de competências relacionadas com a programação de computadores. A aprendizagem das unidades de ensino na disciplina de algoritmos é considerada complexa, exigindo um maior esforço para aquisição de conhecimento. Portanto, o objetivo deste trabalho é apresentar um estudo piloto que consistiu na aplicação de um plano de ensino para a disciplina de algoritmos que utiliza múltiplas abordagens ativas, e avaliar, a partir da percepção dos alunos, a aplicabilidade da proposta de intervenção apresentada neste trabalho. Os resultados foram considerados promissores e podem contribuir para pesquisas futuras ao fornecer um instrumento de apoio ao assunto algoritmos, bem como suas boas práticas de uso.

A Engenharia de software é uma das disciplinas que permite que acadêmicos consigam realizar o desenvolvimento de software. Uma das dificuldades em relação ao seu ensino é identificar formas de aprendizagem que consigam motivar os acadêmicos e fazer com que eles efetivem o conhecimento necessário para ser utilizado na indústria. Com base nisso, este trabalho apresenta um protótipo de um role-playing game que possa ser utilizado como ferramenta para auxiliar no ensino da construção de produtos de software. Foram feitas duas avaliações com estudantes de diferentes níveis de experiência na área de Engenharia de Software, todos cursavam graduação em Ciência da Computação. As avaliações do protótipo indicaram que as mecânicas elaboradas são satisfatórias para que o jogo seja usado em um contexto de sala de aula, para que seja possível verificar a sua eficácia como ferramenta de apoio ao ensino.