A Serious Game to Improve Students’ Skills in Global Software

Development

David Valencia

, Aurora Vizcaíno

, Juan Pablo Soto

and Mario Piattini

Alarcos Research Group, University of Castilla-La Mancha, Ciudad Real, Spain

Department of Mathematics, University of Sonora, Hermosillo, Mexico

Keywords: Serious Games, Global Software Development.

Abstract: In recent years, companies have been forced to change their business model, due to the phenomenon of

globalization. Software development companies are no exception, and have attempted to join the global

market so as to be able to hire labor in other countries, seeking to reduce costs, increase productivity and

gain competitive advantages. This is known as Global Software Development (GSD). To perform this

practice, companies require developers who possess knowledge and skills for solving problems that arise

due to geographical, temporal and cultural distance. Traditional methods for teaching students or employees

how to work in GSD environments are usually expensive, and require much effort. This is where serious

games can play a key role, as they are educational games that allow for the acquisition of knowledge and

skills at a low cost. This article presents a serious game with which some of the competencies needed in

GSD can be acquired. The game simulates scenarios that usually occur in the overall development of a

software project, so that the user can become aware of the problems concerning GSD and gain some

experience in solving these problems.

1 INTRODUCTION

Many areas such as defense, education, health,

policy, emergency management, engineering, etc.

require people with proper training, who possess the

knowledge, skills and abilities needed to

successfully perform their job. Traditional teaching

methods are often costly and require a lot of

preparation time, which is why "Serious Games" are

increasingly being introduced. Serious games are

designed in such a way that their main purpose is not

the entertainment of the user, but rather his or her

training in a certain area (Michael and Chen, 2005).

This does not mean that the game cannot be

enjoyable, but the entertainment derived from the

game is designed to educate, so that the learning

experience of the player becomes fun (Guenaga et

al., 2013). Some of the distinctive features of these

kinds of games is that they are oriented towards

skills training, the understanding of complex

processes and the simulation of situations that occur

in real life (Coster, 2013; Marcano, 2008).

In the area of software development,

globalization has led many companies to undertake

the development of their products in a distributed

way, with that process being conducted by different

teams, even from different countries. This new

development paradigm is known as "Global

Software Development" (Herbsleb and Moitra,

2001); it brings with it a lot of additional problems

in comparison to traditional software development.

These include the delocalization of equipment,

which involves problems of communication,

coordination and control, as well as issues arising

from cultural differences between the different

teams (Vízcaino et al., 2014). Those problems often

hinder understanding between project participants,

especially when they must use a common language.

When those taking part are not using their native

language, misunderstandings that affect

communication and coordination of work may

occur; these could pose a risk for the project

(Monasor et al., 2009). Another important aspect is

trust among those involved in GSD. Mutual trust is

necessary for people to be able to cooperate and

work with each other and a lack in this key

commodity can cause the breakdown of coordination

efforts between remote teams. That makes it

necessary for people working in the GSD to possess

competencies over and above those required in

traditional software development.

470

Valencia, D., Vizcaino, A., Soto, J. and Piattini, M.

A Serious Game to Improve Students’ Skills in Global Software Development.

In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2016) - Volume 1, pages 470-475

ISBN: 978-989-758-179-3

In general, it is difficult to find a suitable method

for teaching these skills, given that lectures are

insufficient. Other methods, such as that described in

(Deiters et al., 2011), in which students located in

different countries carry out a software development

project, are costly and complex to coordinate.

To ease the problems that often arise in GSD, a

serious game that allows the user to acquire the

skills required for the GSD area is proposed. By

playing a game, a global software development

project will be simulated, so that students can

become aware of the problems involved in GSD, and

gain some experience when it comes to solving these

issues.

2 SERIOUS GAMES AS A

LEARNING TOOL

The educational paradigm is currently undergoing a

major shift, moving from teacher-centered

knowledge transfer to a new concept that focuses on

the student; one that is based on the acquisition of

certain competencies by the student that are key to

his or her professional development. In recent years,

these competencies are being incorporated into both

compulsory education and higher education

(Guenaga, et al., 2013). This is when the concept of

serious games gains relevance, as it represents a new

way to acquire these skills.

Serious games can be applied to all levels of

education, inside and outside the classroom, from

children to seniors, as well as to a wide variety of

areas. The potential of serious games as a learning

tool has been recognized for its ability to balance the

entertainment, interactivity and replayability of the

typical games with the aim of reaching a given

educational objective. Moreover, the serious games

approach focuses on learning as a difficult, yet

rewarding challenge, aiming thus to increase the

commitment of the players.

According to Dale’s cone of learning (Dale,

1969) (Figure 1), learning outcomes increase from

top to bottom. Learning by simulating a real

experience (bottom part of Dale’s cone) can improve

understanding of what is being learned more than

learning through reading or hearing can (top part of

Dale’s cone). Dale claims that users could remember

90 percent of what they learn by simulation. Thus, in

order to create a highly efficient learning tool, with

controlled risk and budget in actual practice,

simulation with serious games is the most interesting

method.

Figure 1: Dale’s cone of learning (Dale, 1969).

Some serious games developed for very specific

areas (military, health and education) are described

below:

A. Military

The first games created were based on combat and

fighting. For example, board games like Chaturanga

and Hei Wei, both about 4000 years old, were games

designed to develop strategies for battles. It was not

until 1996, with the appearance of the game Marine

Doom, that the potential of games was appreciated.

This game is a modified version of the game Doom

II (Riddell, 1997). Rather than it being kept as a first

person shooting game, more realistic weapons were

introduced; tasks that encouraged the learning of the

proper sequence of attack were included, such as

conservation of ammunition, effective

communication, giving orders and teamwork.

In recent years, the United States Army has been

exploring the use of serious games as a way to treat

post-traumatic stress disorder in its soldiers (Farocki

and Virilio, 2011).

B. Health

When it comes to health, serious games is a growing

field. Such games are based on simulation and are

used for training. For example, in 2008 in

Birmingham, young doctors were allowed to gain

experience in, and be trained for, a variety of

medical scenarios using computerized mannequins

as if they were patients. In (Graafland et al, 2012),

the authors conducted a systematic review of serious

games for teaching surgical skills and medical

knowledge. Their review included 30 serious games,

of which 17 had an educational purpose; 13 were

designed to develop skills necessary for medical

personnel. From this work they concluded that

serious games can be used to develop both technical

and non-technical skills in the surgical field.

A Serious Game to Improve Students’ Skills in Global Software Development

471

Moreover, in (Smith, 2009), the author compared

traditional teaching, for those carrying out

laparoscopic surgery, with training using virtual

reality and tools based on games. He noted that the

latter was less expensive, took less time and resulted

in fewer errors when the surgery was actually

performed. As well as these examples, there are

other games like The Virtual Dental Implant

Training Simulation (Medical College of Georgia,

2009), which was designed to help dental students in

diagnosis, decision making and training protocols.

This technology is also being studied to help in the

rehabilitation of stroke patients, as well as to assess the

cognitive abilities of adults with Alzheimer's.

C. Education

The limited use of serious games in formal

education may be related to the issues around the use

of leisure games. The games are therefore often not

effective for all students. This is due in part to

pedagogy; that is, players learn through repetition

and exploration, which contrasts with the learning of

discrete quantities of information, as can be found in

schools (Squire, 2005).

Another aspect to consider is that the formal

education system has to adhere to the knowledge and

procedures required for external examinations. This

means that games must also address these areas. For

example, some educational serious games that can be

found on the market are: 3D Networks, a serious game

whose aim is to train civil engineering students about

the risks of public works near underground networks;

and NanoMission, a serious game designed to teach

players the concepts of nanoscience through real

world practical applications.

Other interesting serious games are: Quest for oil,

a serious game for oil exploration; Cruise ship, a

game designed to train a cruise crew to respond

appropriately to varying disasters; RescueSim, a

virtual game that prepares security professionals for

real-life accidents; and SimjavaSP (Shaw and

Dermoundy, 2005), a game in which the student plays

the role of project manager and focuses on the

optimization of time, cost and quality of a software

project.

Our research is centered on the software

development process, specifically in GSD. One of

the studies which focused on this area is set out in

(Noll et al, 2014). In this work the researchers

describe a serious game that simulates a GSD

environment. The game’s objective is to provide

students with the necessary expertise to address the

problems that often arise in environments of global

development.

3 A SERIOUS GAME FOR GSD

This section focuses on describing the serious game

tool that we propose. In this game the user will play

the role of a project manager. The game is based on

the planning of a software project, where working

with people from around the world is simulated; the

user has to deal with problems that arise because of

the geographical, cultural and temporal distance that

is present in GSD. Besides being a tool to acquire a

body of knowledge, it combines the essential aspects

of a game, resulting in a more entertaining and

pleasant learning experience for the student.

A. The Game’s Requirements

The system needed to meet a number of

requirements to simulate scenarios that often occur

when working on GSD projects. A scenario consists

of a name, duration, budget, component modules

and the countries involved.

Some of the main capabilities of the game are

now described:

• The game should simulate a series of

unexpected events or problems that could

occur when participating in a GSD project.

For example, a worker is on holiday or sick,

or there is a public holiday in one of the

countries in which part of the development

team is located, or there is a problem with the

server or repository that contains the project,

etc. These events are produced randomly.

• The game should have different scenarios,

which have a variety of levels of difficulty.

The user will start with the simplest,

increasing the level of difficulty as he

progresses. In this way it is intended that

students should acquire skills gradually. In

addition, the application must allow a teacher

to customize scenarios if his intention is for

the student to practice a particular scenario.

• The game will simulate a chat, email and

telephone, so that students have to work with

both synchronous and asynchronous

communication. The application will thus

allow for the random simulation of incoming

emails, telephone calls and chats.

• The user should be able to choose from a list

of solutions whenever an unexpected event

occurs; these solutions receive a higher or

lower score depending on how appropriate

they are for solving the problem in hand.

CSEDU 2016 - 8th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

472

• The game will have a points system, which

will fluctuate depending on the number of

days remaining for the delivery of the software

and on the available budget. A bad decision by

the user when facing an unexpected event will

thus result in a greater budget loss and

reduction in days remaining than if the

decision had been properly selected.

• The user will be able to ask for help when he

is unable to overcome a particular scenario.

• The game will allow the user to modify the

data in his profile, access instructions and use

the game, as well as to see the history of his

or her score achieved at a given time.

• The user will be able to interact with virtual

employees in different scenarios. Employees

are characterized by name, country, role,

salary, email, experience and a photo that

represents them.

B. Tool

The game consists of two main subsystems, one

for students and the other for the teacher responsible

for proposing scenarios and supervising the student.

To access each subsystem both the student and the

teacher must be registered; the system therefore has

an interface for access and another for registration.

Once the student decides to play a game, the

application will show him the main game interface

(Figure 2). As can be seen, the interface is divided

into three columns. The left column contains project

information (name, budget, time remaining, the times

of the countries involved, trust among members

working in the project, etc.). It is also in this column

that students can access the configuration of the

modules that make up the project. Once the modules

are configured, the game can be started. The middle

column contains buttons to access phone, chat and

email; in addition, information related to the action

that is being executed at any one time is shown in this

same column. Finally, the column on the right shows

an image of the calendar, which can be accessed by

clicking on the image; various actions that may be

performed during the game can also be accessed by

clicking on them.

During the execution of the game, problems

which typically arise when working in GSD

environments will appear randomly before the

student; he or she must solve these as the game

progresses. At the end of each game, the system will

show the user the result obtained during the activity

(see Figure 3).

Figure 2: Game interface.

Figure 3: Information containing the outcome of the game.

Moreover, there is a subsystem that only the

teacher can access. In this subsystem the teacher can

create problems, voice calls, chats, projects, see the

results of the student's game, etc. Some of the

interfaces of the subsystem are shown below.

Figure 4: Interface used by the teacher to create a

problema.

A Serious Game to Improve Students’ Skills in Global Software Development

473

Figure 4 shows the interface used by the teacher

to create a problem. The solutions to the problem are

shown in the Solutions box. To add a solution, the

player should select the one he wants from the box

called All Solutions (bottom panel), which contains

all the available solutions. Furthermore, the

following fields must be captured: Description

(problem description), Difficulty (difficulty level of

the problem) and Type (type of problem, i.e.,

linguistic, cultural, communication or other).

Besides this, the user’s teacher has the option of

creating calls (Figure 5) and creating chats. Both

options allow the teacher to formulate specific

scenarios for each student at their discretion.

Figure 5: Interface used by the teacher to create a phone

call.

Finally, the interface used by the teacher to

create projects is shown (Figure 6). To create a new

project, the teacher must complete the general

project information: name, budget, duration,

component modules, potential problems, phone

calls, chats and countries of the participants in the

development teams.

Figure 6: Interface used by the teacher to create a Project.

4 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE

WORK

This article presents a serious game that supports the

acquisition of the knowledge and skills needed in

GSD. Since it is a game, it has the advantage of

being much more affordable and entertaining than

other traditional training methods.

The game is based on the simulation of a

scenario in which a project is developed. The player

must complete all phases that make up each module.

During the development of the game a series of

problems will arise, and the user should be able to

reduce the likelihood of them getting worse, by

choosing certain actions available to him.

The tool is in currently the process of validation

and testing by experts in serious games through a

quality model based on serious games (García-

Mundo et al, 2015), and there are some proposals for

future work. One of these is to adapt the tool to

allow multiple users with different roles to play

between them, offering the possibility of also

training participants in leadership skills.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work is partially supported by GINSENG

(TIN2015-70259), GLOBALIA (PEII-2014-038-P),

Consejería de Educación y Ciencia, Junta de

Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha and SDGear

(TSI-100104-2014-4), ITEA 2 (Call 7), co-funded

by the“Ministerio de Industria, Energía y

Turismodentro del Plan Nacional de Investigación

Científica, Desarrollo e Innovación Tecnológica”

2013-2016.

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