Every Effort Will Be Rewarded: Gamification in Teaching Software Architecture with the Use of Badges

• Adryan Araújo UFC
• Adrian Coelho UFC
• Maria Elanne Rodrigues UFC
• Windson Viana UFC
• Anna Beatriz Marques UFC

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/wei.2024.3064

Abstract

Gamification in the educational context has been studied as a promising alternative methodology to increase student motivation and, consequently, enhance their learning processes. This paper describes a specific intervention in the Software Architecture course, offered by the Federal University of Ceará, Russas campus, where gamified elements were incorporated. Throughout the course, badge cards were used to track student progress, allowing the exchange of accumulated points for rewards upon completion of designated activities. This approach was implemented in a class of 55 students. The analysis of feedback, obtained through surveys, indicated an increased perception of motivation, engagement, and interest among the students involved.

References

Alves, F. (2015). Gamification: como criar experiências de aprendizagem engajadoras. Um guia completo: do conceito à pratica. DVS Editora, São Paulo, 2 edition.

Bass, L., Clements, P., and Kazman, R. (2013). Software architecture in practice.

Brown, S. (2022). The c4 model for visualising software architecture. [online]. [link]. Ebook.

Cervantes, H., Haziyev, S., Hrytsay, O., and Kazman, R. (2016). Smart decisions: an architectural design game. In Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Software Engineering Companion, ICSE ’16. ACM.

Díaz-Ramírez, J. (2020). Gamification in engineering education – an empirical assessment on learning and game performance. Heliyon, 6(9):e04972.

Galster, M. and Angelov, S. (2016). What makes teaching software architecture difficult? In Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Software Engineering Companion, ICSE ’16. ACM.

Hunter, D. and Werbach, K. (2012). For the Win: How Game Thinking can Revolutionize your Business, volume 2. Wharton digital press.

Kapp, K. M. (2012). The gamification of learning and instruction: game-based methods and strategies for training and education. John Wiley & Sons.

Kruchten, P. (1995a). Mommy, where do software architectures come from? In Proceedings of the 1st Intl. Workshop on Architectures for Software Systems, pages 198–205.

Kruchten, P. B. (1995b). The 4+ 1 view model of architecture. IEEE software, 12(6):42–50.

Lago, P., Cai, J., de Boer, R., Kruchten, P., and Verdecchia, R. (2019). Decidarch: Playing cards as software architects. In Proceedings of the 52nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), pages 7815–7824. Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS).

Lago, P. and van Vliet, H. (2005). Teaching a course on software architecture. In 18th Conference on Software Engineering Education & Training (CSEET’05). IEEE.

Lieh Ouh, E., Kok Siew Gan, B., and Irawan, Y. (2020). Did our course design on software architecture meet our student’s learning expectations? In 2020 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE). IEEE.

Maia, A., Oliveira, L., Rodrigues, M. E., Viana, W., and Marques, A. B. (2023). Adotando aulas invertidas e gamificação no ensino de qualidade de processos de software com foco no mps.br. pages 305–316.

Marques, A. B. (2017). Promovendo o engajamento e aprendizado colaborativo de modelagem de interação por meio de modeling dojo. In Proceedings of the VIII HCI Education Workshop-XVI Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems (WEIHC 2017), Santa Catarina, Joinville.

Martinelli, S., Choma, J., Saad, J., and Zaina, L. (2023). Análise qualitativa em ihc: da codificação à criação de visualizações. Apresentação de slides em PDF. XXII Simpósio Brasileiro sobre Fatores Humanos em Sistemas Computacionais, Maceió - AL, Brasil.

Mayer, B. and Weinreich, R. (2019). The effect of gamification on software architecture knowledge management: a student experiment and focus group study. In Proceedings of the 34th ACM/SIGAPP Symposium on Applied Computing, SAC ’19, page 1731–1740, New York, NY, USA. Association for Computing Machinery.

Männistö, T., Savolainen, J., and Myllärniemi, V. (2008). Teaching software architecture design. pages 117 – 124.

Oliveira, B., Garcés, L., Lyra, K., Santos, D., Isotani, S., and Nakagawa, E. (2022). An overview of software architecture education. In Anais do XXV Congresso Ibero-Americano em Engenharia de Software, pages 76–90, Porto Alegre, RS, Brasil. SBC.

Oliveira, W., Bittencourt, I. I., Dermeval, D., and Isotani, S. (2021). Gamificação e informática na educação. In Sampaio, F. F., Pimentel, M., and Santos, E. O., editors, Informática na Educação: games, inteligência artificial, realidade virtual/aumentada e computação ubíqua, volume 7 of Série Informática na Educação, Porto Alegre. Sociedade Brasileira de Computação.

Pereira, R., Rodrigues, K., and Silveira, M. (2021). Gamifichi: thematized badges for hci courses. In Anais do XX Simpósio Brasileiro sobre Fatores Humanos em Sistemas Computacionais, Porto Alegre, RS, Brasil. SBC.

Rupakheti, C. R. and Chenoweth, S. V. (2015). Teaching software architecture to undergraduate students: An experience report. In 2015 IEEE/ACM 37th IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering. IEEE.

Ryan, R. M., Koestner, R., and Deci, E. L. (1991). Ego-involved persistence: When free-choice behavior is not intrinsically motivated.motivation and emotion.

Silveira, M. (2020). Badges for all: using gamification to engage hci students. In Anais do XIX Simpósio Brasileiro sobre Fatores Humanos em Sistemas Computacionais, pages 71–80, Porto Alegre, RS, Brasil. SBC.

Sommervile, I. (2018). Engenharia de software (10ª edição).

Sousa, T. and Marques, A. (2020). Learn board game: A game for teaching software architecture created through design science research. In Anais do XXXIV Simpósio Brasileiro de Engenharia de Software, Porto Alegre, RS, Brasil. SBC.