SimulES-W: A collaborative game to improve software engineering teaching

There is empirical evidence concerning the effectiveness and benefits of game-based learning (GBL). Our mainly interest is to present a tool that can be used to complement teaching software engineering in a motivating and didactic way. This paper studies the use of a GBL tool called SimulES-W (Simulation in Software Engineering), to teach Software Engineering in an undergraduate engineering program. SimulES-W has three characteristics: it is based on real software cases, it can be customized during the learning process, and it is a collaborative game. These characteristics are important because they help us understand and propose a new learning scenario, and to research with this the learning processes in their environments According to it, the first characteristic of SimulES-W makes it a motivating and engaging game, which brings up cases, which usually are only present in real software projects. Thanks to the second characteristic, the educators can use SimuelES-W to customize the education material, and tune the game for specific software engineering courses. The third characteristic is related to the proposed game as activity that involves group discussions and decision-making. This paper presents SimulES-W a digital version of SimulES and reports the results of an evaluation from a pedagogical perspective, where game adequacy for teaching a subject and positive potential impact in student's academic performance are investigated. © 2018 Instituto Politecnico Nacional. All rights reserved