تحویل ! - بازی آموزشی برای تدریس مدیریت ارزش کسب شده در دوره های محاسباتی

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.

Project management (PM) is the discipline of planning, executing, monitoring and controlling resources to successfully complete a project. It is a key factor for delivering successful projects on time and within budget. In recent years, all business sectors, including the software sector, have increasingly recognized PM as a core competence [1] and [2]. As a consequence, the need for project managers has never been greater than today [3]. Many organizations are looking for trained project managers, who can fill the gap between executive managers and the “techies”. As this occurs, the need for PM education and training in the software sector grows. Project managers have long been trained on the job with little formal training on PM [4], [5] and [6]. Many project managers take on their job reluctantly and unprepared [7]. Especially, in computing courses, PM is still considered a minor topic [8], taught as only one of several topics in software engineering classes. To compensate for this lack of formal PM education, a vast variety of professional training courses are offered and certifications, such as, PMP – Project Management Professional (http://www.pmi.org) are demanded for PM professionals. Another issue is the way in which PM is typically taught. Expository lessons are still the dominant instructional technique [9]. They are adequate to present abstract concepts and factual information. But, they are not the most suitable for higher-cognitive objectives aiming at the application and transfer of knowledge to real-life situations [10]. On the other hand, practical constraints regarding class duration and instructors’ effort usually limit the possibilities of students to exercise the concepts and techniques [11]. Therefore, it remains a challenge to teach students in a compact, but effective and motivating way. In this context, serious games have become an alternative offering various advantages [9]. They can help to reinforce basic concepts. Games can also contribute to teach higher-cognitive competencies illustrating their application and relevance with acceptable training time and instructor load [12]. And, building on the engaging nature of games, they can make learning more fun, if not easier [13].

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.