D-LEARN: um jogo digital baseado no jogo de tabuleiro Learn para ensino de arquitetura

Abstract

The use of games for teaching has been increasingly used to make learning fun, interactive, and less massive for the students. This approach is called game-based learning. In the field of Software Engineering, several games can be found with the purpose of trying to help students better understand real-world situations, the impact of their decisions, and teamwork, through a simulated environment. Such games use tools such as cards, board, or digital interfaces to promote a game-like dynamic. When it comes to teaching software architectural decisions, these games aim to provide a more familiar approach to 21st century students - who were born in the digital age and are very familiar with games - trying to make students better abstract the large amount of concepts needed to a professional software architect. From this perspective, games such as LEARN Board Game, which is a non-digital game that aims to help teaching software architecture through a board and card game, has an important role in the list of tools used by software architecture professors to try to solve abstract problems. However, LEARN has its limitations because it is a non-digital game. As an example, we can mention the non-ecological way the game is made (using paper and plastic) and the difficulties to make simple changes such as changing the text of a card or changing the board. Therefore, even though it is a tool that helps teachers, its handling is not so satisfactory for those who use it. Thus, the objective of this work was to build a digital version of LEARN, called D-LEARN, improving its negative points and maximizing its positive points, through the methodology of research and development Design Science Research (DSR), which proposes cycles of activities for building or updating an artifact that aims to solve a real world problem with a pragmatic and satisfactory approach. The digital game obtained a quality score considered excellent according to the calculation suggested by the MEEGA+ questionnaire, surpassing the quality score of the non-digital game.