Metric cake shop: A serious game for supporting education on ISO/IEC/IEEE 15939:2017 – Systems and software engineering – Measurement process in the context of an undergraduate software engineering course

Abstract

The educational use of serious games has increased in recent years and their pedagogical benefits have been widely documented, especially for teaching specialized knowledge on Software Engineering at undergraduate level. The results achieved by several studies in this area show that it has been possible to increase the student interest and motivation in learning complex topics that tend to be difficult to understand when knowledge is imparted through traditional lectures, as is the case with software process standards. In this regard, the ISO/IEC/IEEE 15939:2017 standard describes a software measurement process, one of the main topics that must be addressed in any curriculum for undergraduate degree programs in Software Engineering. However, despite their relevance in industry, many students are leaving university without basic software measurement skills. With the aim of identifying serious games for teaching the software measurement process at undergraduate level, a Systematic Literature Review was conducted in order to collect, classify and analyze information which enabled the authors of this study to propose a serious game that improves the understanding and education on the ISO/IEC/IEEE 15939:2017 standard. The results from an empirical evaluation involving Computer Science undergraduates provided evidence that positive learning experiences occurred when playing the created serious game.