Bringing Life to the Classroom: Engaging Students through the

Integration of HCI in SE Projects

Milene S. Silveira and Alessandra C. S. Dutra

School of Technology, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do RS (PUCRS), Porto Alegre, Brazil

Keywords: Integration of Theory and Practice, Interdisciplinarity, Software Engineering Program, Human-Computer

Interaction.

Abstract: Integration is a key aspect of teaching and learning processes. Integrating theory and practice based on

knowledge from different courses and even from different programs is fundamental and strategic so that

students can better understand not only their specific fields of study and work but also their relationship within

research and market contexts. This study aims at presenting integration experiences between theory and

practice from a Software Engineering Program. We focus on the application of methods studied in a course

from the Human-Computer Interaction area in courses of software development practices, through projects

involving real clients, developed by the students themselves. We discuss the lessons learned, challenges, and

perspectives of change in those involved courses, bringing the students’ opinions, who have highlighted,

among other points, the importance of such integration to bring theory closer to their real universe of action.

1 INTRODUCTION

Integration is a key aspect of our current teaching and

learning process. Integrating theory and practice

based on knowledge from different courses and even

from different programs is fundamental and strategic

so that students can better understand not only their

specific fields of study and work but also how they

relate in broader research and market contexts.

According to Zaina and Alvaro (2014),

“Interdisciplinarity in undergraduate education is a

practice that directly contributes to the development

of competencies and skills based on the integrative

vision and the constant relationship between theory

and practice”. Matos (2013) also highlights that

“curriculum integration has been one of the education

initiatives so that lessons make sense to students”.

In this context, we present an account of the

integration experiences between theory and practice

in a Software Engineering (SE) Program, focusing on

the application of methods studied in a course from

the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) area in

courses of software development practices, through

projects developed by the students themselves, for

real clients.

From this account, we discuss the lessons learned,

challenges, and perspectives of change in those

involved courses, bringing the students’ opinions,

who have highlighted, among other points, the

importance of such integration to bring theory closer

to their real universe of action.

To better understand the scenario in which this

work is inserted, the next section will address some

work related to the subject, presenting

interdisciplinarity and integration experiences in

courses and programs related to the area of HCI and

SE. In section 3, the implementation context of these

integration experiences is presented, describing the

program, the environment where the practical

developments are carried out and the HCI course in

question. Section 4 presents four different integration

experiences encountered in the HCI course

throughout the Program’s implementation, followed

by a discussion on this integration, bringing

statements from the Program’s students. Lastly, we

present final considerations about our study,

supported by the references used for its construction.

390

Silveira, M. and Dutra, A.

Bringing Life to the Classroom: Engaging Students through the Integration of HCI in SE Projects.

DOI: 10.5220/0007710103900397

In Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2019), pages 390-397

ISBN: 978-989-758-372-8

2 INTERDISCIPLINARITY AND

TEACHING-PRACTICE

INTEGRATION

In exploratory research conducted in 2012 with the

Brazilian community, both teaching-practice

integration and interdisciplinarity were highlighted as

challenges regarding the teaching of HCI in the

country (Barbosa, 2012). Silva (2014) also

emphasized this lack of integration among areas,

particularly considering HCI, as a major issue in

computing education.

Taking this context into account, we have had

several initiatives, arising from the HCI community

to try to foster integration and interdisciplinarity.

Bim (2010) presented an integration experience

among HCI, SE, and Database courses, highlighting

the potential of such integration not only for the

experimentation, in practice, of the concepts from

each area, but also for professors to better understand

the role of each course in a systems development

project.

Zaina and Alvaro (2014), in turn, analyzed the

perspectives of working with interdisciplinary

projects and, through Project and System

Development and Human-Computer Interface

courses, proposed, in 2012, a model for conducting

those courses that would integrate the concepts

studied in both of them into a practical project with

the objective of creating entrepreneurial solutions.

In another approach conducted by Silva (2014),

articulation and integration happened by means of

conceptualizing interaction as a communication

process, analogous to other fundamental activities of

the software development process: requirements

engineering, software design, and programming.

Furthermore, Britto (2014) provided an

experience report on the integration of HCI concepts

and techniques in the Design Patterns and Software

Engineering courses, corroborated by the research

carried out with students, indicating positive

indicators about the approach being used.

These initiative examples help to illustrate the

community concerns regarding such important issues

and how much we can work to improve this context.

3 WORK CONTEXT

In the following sections, we will present some details

about the Program in which the study described here

is inserted, the environment in which the practical

developments are carried out, and the concerned HCI

course.

3.1 The Program

The main objective of the Software Engineering

Program from Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio

Grande do Sul (PUCRS), is to prepare professionals

with solid training in Computer Science,

Mathematics, and Software Production processes,

specializing in the development of applications from

information and communication technologies

(PUCRS, 2019). Focused primarily on software

solutions aligned to business, these professionals will

have in-depth knowledge of software architecture,

technology, and development processes, so as to be

able to produce robust, high-quality software in a

systematic and efficient way. Their performance will

be buoyed by a humanistic and solidary formation,

according to the educational principles that guide the

actions of the University.

Being innovative in its design, it was created from

the context of regional and national industry, in which

large software companies require this kind of

professionals.

This program started in March 2015, having its

first group graduating at the end of this year.

3.2 The Agency and Practice Courses

At the Software Engineering Experiential Agency,

undergraduate students have a practical learning

environment, which was designed for the following

purposes (Yamaguti et al, 2017):

a. provide students with the experience of real

project situations in an environment that focuses

on learning through real projects and clients;

b. enable the interdisciplinary integration of contents

from the Software Engineering Program;

c. integrate teaching, research, and extension;

d. allow contact with organizations and companies

whenever this contact adds elements for the

background of the alumni profile;

e. build with the students their project portfolio

through the projects executed by them in the

Agency.

At the Agency, the practice courses are

developed, being a curricular component of the

program. The courses are composed of four modules:

Practice in Experiential Agency I, II, III, and IV, each

with 120 hours (60 hours in the classroom (4 credits)

and 60 outside the classroom). Table 1 presents the

competencies related to each module developed in the

Bringing Life to the Classroom: Engaging Students through the Integration of HCI in SE Projects

391

Agency, as well as the prerequisites for each module,

according to the curricular matrix of the program.

As for the projects executed inside the Agency,

they come from:

a. Demands from other University Units;

b. Demands from students;

c. Demands from professors;

d. Open call for project selection;

e. Demands from Companies;

f. University incentive programs to support

entrepreneurship and the development of startups.

Regarding the incentive programs (item f), the

Agency rewards the top performers with the

execution – within the Agency– of their projects.

Table 1: Set of evaluative assignments.

Competencies

Curricular matrix

requisites

 Programming

 Unit testing

 Debugging

 Object-Oriented

Programming (co-

requisite)

 Introduction to

Software

Engineering

(special requisite)

 Database Project

 Requirements

Analysis

 Development

 Database Modeling

and Design

(special requisite)

 Object-Oriented

Programming

(prerequisite)

III

 Testing and

Verification

 Software project

 Software

Architecture

 Verification and

Validation II

(special requisite)

 Software

Architecture and

Design

(prerequisite)

 Project

Management

 Deepening of

other

competencies

developed in the

program

 Senior project

portfolio

 Software Project

Management

(prerequisite)

3.3 The Course

The HCI area includes two courses from the program:

Fundamentals of HCI, a 4-credit mandatory course

offered in the 3

semester, and Interaction Design, a

2-credit course which is also compulsory, offered in

the 4

semester. In this article, our focus is on the first

course.

This course aims at introducing the HCI area, its

main concepts and theories, as well as different

evaluation methods on quality of use and the

principles of the interaction design process.

The course has several of its topics deepened

through the practical application of the methods

discussed in class. In addition to various exercises and

activities throughout the semester, a set of four

evaluative assignments is carried out: the first three

dealing with the evaluation of the quality of use of

interactive systems (one with the application of

collecting users’ opinion, another with the application

of evaluation methods by inspection, and the last one

through usage observation), and the fourth on

elicitation and analysis of user data, as presented in

Table 2.

Table 2: Set of evaluative assignments.

Focus Used Methods

T1.1

 Collecting

Users’

opinions



Surveys

 Interviews

 Focus Groups

T1.2

 Inspection



Heuristic Evaluation

T1.3

 Usage

Observatio



Usability Evaluation

 Communicability

Evaluation

 Elicitation

and

analysis of

user data



Surveys

 Interviews

 Focus Groups

 Personas

 Scenarios

The main focus of these assignments relies on real

projects, especially those under development at the

Agency itself. This way, students may analyze real

cases, with the opportunity to interact with their

stakeholders, with their project and development

team, as well as with their future users. Moreover, all

results obtained from the projects are forwarded to the

Agency, so that they can be used as inputs for new

design and development stages.

The course’s first class was in 2016/1 and, in the

last semesters, it was possible to analyze a good range

of projects. Some of these experiences will be

discussed in the next section.

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4 INTEGRATION EXPERIENCES

As mentioned in the previous section, the

assignments carried out at Fundamentals of HCI have

been mostly applied in real cases under development

in the Agency, and, in some cases, in other projects

developed within the University.

To better illustrate how these experiences happen,

some of these experiences of integration between the

course and the Agency will be presented and

discussed.

4.1 Contact with Stakeholder

One of the projects developed at the Agency met a

demand from the University library for bibliographic

records by curriculum/program’s course, integrated

to the consultation of existing titles in the library and

allowing the generation of acquisition demands and

monitoring of requests. In the previous semester, we

had already met a request from the director of the

library with the analysis of the library’s search

system. In this case, focusing on the bibliographic

registration system, the focus was on the collection

and representation of users’ needs (T2), two moments

of emphasis on students.

At first, a collective interview was held with the

director of the library, who was willing to go during

the course and talk to the class, to which the students

had prepared themselves from what there had already

been in terms of documentation on the project,

creating, in small groups, questions to be asked

during the interview. They were also responsible for

conducting the interview and recording all obtained

data.

From the data collected and analyzed, the students

created personas representing the system’s main

users, as well as possible scenarios of interaction with

the system. On the work presentation day, the director

of the library attended again, discussing the obtained

results with the students.

As a highlight, in this specific case, besides the

real contact with the main stakeholder of the project,

we mention the need of internal organization of the

groups, in the definition of who would record the

answers, who would ask the questions, and so on,

always bearing in mind they were dealing with a

professional - the Director of the library - and not a

classmate.

4.2 Feedback during Sprints

Generally, feedback from HCI students to the Agency

is given at the end of each semester, when the results

of each group (for each assignment) are consolidated

and sent to be used by the teams. In a particular

semester, we were able to align the analysis of a

prototype system with one of its delivery sprints and

thus provide feedback during the development

process.

The project in question was intended for people

with visual impairments, with a system that, from the

donation of voices, would help in the creation of

audiobooks, to be developed by the University

Publishing House.

For the assignment of the course (T1.3), students

should perform a Communicability Evaluation of the

current version of the system, focusing on voice

donor users. After planning the evaluation,

conducting user observations, and analyzing the data

collected, the professor of Fundamentals of HCI and

the students representing the class met with the

Practice Professor at the Agency and representatives

of her students to present and discuss the results

obtained.

For the Fundamentals of HCI students, this was a

significant opportunity to discuss the evaluation

carried out directly with those who would make use

of the results for project improvement. As for the

Practice students, this was an opportunity to receive

feedback about the work developed through an

external view, and, based on such feedback, they were

able to review the whole project, thus, presenting a

new version already with the adjustments for the

project client.

4.3 Contact with Potential Users

Getting to know your potential users is fundamental

for the development of an interactive system that

values the quality of use. One of the Agency’s

projects focused on developing a game that would

help children “take care of their health without

knowing they were taking care of their health”, id est,

to support disease prevention.

In order to better understand the problem and the

profile of potential users of this type of game (T2),

besides studying the project documentation, students

researched scientific articles in qualified publications

about children, games, disease prevention, among

others, and also sought results from demographic

research on the subject. After appropriating the

subject, in small groups, they developed interview

scripts to be carried out with children.

A group of 5 children (children of professors from

the program) was invited to participate in one of the

classes so that the students could understand this

profile and, most importantly, the children’s point of

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393

view, which would be crucial in an application of this

genre.

The class was composed of 32 students and was

divided into three large groups. The children - 3 girls

and 2 boys, aged between 9 and 13 years old – were

also divided into three groups (2 pairs and 1

individual), and were interviewed as a “circuit” (they

went through all groups).

Besides the observation of this dynamic by the

course professor, the software architect, member of

the Agency’s technical team, also took part in the

lesson, observing the activity.

One of the activity highlights was to “break” some

preconceived views students had regarding children

in general (many of their “certainties” about children

behavior ended up not being confirmed), proving the

importance of knowing the users intended to be

achieved.

4.4 Self-knowledge

As stated in the previous section, knowing your

potential users is critical, but self-knowledge and self-

reflection are also key steps in the teaching and

learning process. In some cases, HCI students

themselves were invited to participate as users, in the

scope of users’ opinion collection work (T1.1).

In one of the assignments, the focus was on the

project of a system directly related to the Agency, to

capture ideas of new projects to be executed in it. In

this assignment, students, through semi-structured

interviews, should collect opinions from students of

the Software Engineering program.

In total (in the consolidation of answers from

different groups of the class), 42 students from the

program were interviewed. In addition to specific

points related to the project, the students’ knowledge

(or not) about the Agency’s objective in the Program

was emphasized. Some students pointed out that they

would have restrictions on sending ideas to the

Agency – through the system in question- fearing

plagiarism of their ideas, and others stated they

expected some sort of bonus for the projects

developed in it. These points, more than helping to

(re)think the tool in question, help in a refinement of

the presentation of the Agency and its objective,

which is, as mentioned before, to provide the students

with the experience of real project situations in an

environment focused on learning, through the

development of projects with real clients.

Another example of the students’ participation as

users during the period of opinion collection, focused

on the same project of the game to support children in

the prevention of diseases previously mentioned, but

in the course that took place in the semester following

that of the interview with the children. On this

occasion, with a greater understanding of what the

project would be (a quiz game), an activity was

carried out with the application of usage logs, in

which, for a week, the students should use known

quiz tools daily (some of which even mentioned by

the children in the previous stage), recording their

interaction every day. After the recording stage, the

students participated in focus groups to define main

characteristics, positive and negative points, which

were then returned to the game design team.

Another interesting factor worth highlighting in

this Agency’s project analysis is that sometimes

students are in Fundamental courses and developing

the Practices at the same time, and can bring feedback

from the class to their teams in an immediate way,

besides serving as a support point of the class for

doubts about the projects as well.

5 DISCUSSION

Each semester and each new analyzed project bring a

new set of learned lessons, challenges, and

perspectives for reflection and change. Some

assignments, for example, required to have their focus

changed during their implementation period, either

due to unavailability of the target audience for data

collection or some specific platform for usage of the

system under development. Similarly to what would

happen in a project in the industry, the students in

class needed to adapt to changes, new demands, and

new scopes of work.

The contact with people outside the class, whether

being project stakeholders and/or potential end users,

is always a challenge. The search for profiles they

wanted to achieve, as well as and especially the

contact with these people, make the students have to

improve their interpersonal communication skills.

Communication is of paramount importance in the

course, when most of the work – whether by the

methods used or by the need to reach a broader

audience – is carried out in groups, which also makes

cooperation and collaboration essential for its

success. Written communication is also essential

while writing the reports for each assignment, with

detailed specifications to be followed not only for the

course evaluation but also to be subsequently passed

on to the Agency for studies and usage in ongoing

projects.

In order to comprise the students’ vision regarding

this integration as well, an online survey was

conducted, questioning them about their opinion on

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394

the use of Agency projects as a basis for the

assignments of Fundamentals of HCI. We gathered

16 answers, which, despite not being a high number,

shed light on some points for discussion and

reflection on the course. Respondents represent

students from different semesters of the program, and

even two students were attending the course when the

survey was applied. Everyone had already taken at

least one of the Agency’s courses.

As for the experience of working with projects

developed (or under development) by the Agency, the

use of real projects stands out, as described by P14,

“analyzing a real project was a good experience”

(P14, student from the 4

semester), and by P15, “I

liked it, because it brings a real level of difficulty to

the assignments” (P15, student from the 4

semester).

Moreover, the importance for the projects themselves

was mentioned: “It was a great idea because the

contents we saw in HCI are perfectly compatible with

any project developed in the Agency. This would also

benefit project teams, as UX and usability issues are

often overlooked by teams. It is important that people

understand how important this area is in SE” (P9, a

student from the 3

semester), and “The dynamics

worked out quite well (...). The cool thing is that many

of the stories had not been implemented yet, so

investigating criteria and options for using the tool

via interviews and surveys made a lot of sense” (P11,

semester).

Figure 1: Respondents’ semester (3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th).

The benefits for the teams were also highlighted

when students were asked about the return of the

results to the Agency: “Great, because this way we

can make improvements” (P7, 7

semester), “It

helped to find no visible problems in the progress of

the project” (P14, 4

semester), and “it helped to find

errors that had gone unnoticed. Not to mention that it

helped us make the interface more user-friendly”

(P15, 4

semester).

For one of the students, it was “Indifferent,

because we received feedback only in the project’s

finish line and we did not have time to evaluate

students’ suggestions. I believe that the ideal would

be to follow-up sprints” (P10, 4

semester). This is

one of the challenges faces by the courses, in the

sense of adjusting the calendars of both, which, as

previously described, we have achieved in some

semesters and have more and more tried to align.

Furthermore, still in relation to the return to the

Agency, the concepts worked on the course as a

whole, and not necessarily the analysis of some

specific project, was also highlighted: “Only in one

instance did I see this bridge being made; in my

second module, some students were attending the

course and, with some fresher concepts in mind,

brought improvements to the system” (P7, 7

semester).

When asked about the contact with real users, the

students have emphasized the importance of this point

of view to better understand users’ needs: “It was

important to know what the users were thinking, we

have already had an idea of what the application

would be like, but seeing what they thought of it was

important” (P3, 5

semester); “I found the proposals

very nice, and they emphasize the importance of the

User's point of view very much, which is a matter that

certainly cannot be missing in the HCI course,” (P4,

semester); “Great interaction with the stakeholder

to clarify doubts” (P7, 6

semester); “Direct

involvement with the client and not with the

developer, thus being a ‘clearer’ view of real needs”

(P13, 6

semester).

An interesting point highlighted by a student who

is attending the course this semester is that it is

“unfair that only one project is involved. If this is so,

only one project will always benefit, because often

these things are not done within other projects due to

lack of time”. He suggests to diversify the projects in

each semester, not being the same for the whole class,

and “with this, we can benefit all teams, or at least

give them a chance” (P9, 3

semester). This

suggestion was taken into account during the current

semester, and the groups were able to choose the

projects they would like to analyze, seeking partner

teams in the Agency.

Finally, one of the students from the class of

possible graduates points out that “The more courses

having a bridge with the Agency the better, because it

is within the Agency that students without any market

experience have their first notion of this universe,

which is totally different from the academic

environment” (P16, 7

semester).

Besides the students’ point of view, we also

sought the software architect’s vision, who is a

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395

member of the Agency’s technical team and monitors

the students’ work:

“The Agency’s integration with the courses from

the Software Engineering program is very enriching

for the students’ learning. We have been able to

achieve great results with the HCI course, as a

consequence of the work that has been improving

throughout the semesters of existence and

development of the Agency. At the end of each

semester, we were able to analyze, reflect, and adapt

the teaching process for next semester.

In the case of HCI course, at the beginning of each

semester, we set up a new schedule and define which

Agency projects will be object of study, always with

the guidance and endorsement of the responsible

professor. The chosen projects may have already

been finished or still in progress, depending on the

status of each of the Agency's projects.

Throughout the semesters, some students came to

me requesting further information on these projects,

trying to better understand the decisions made. Some

of the questions were, as follows:

 Why do we use such technology?

 Why was a certain functionality made like that?

 Where did the “stakeholders” come from?

There are also dynamics in the classroom that

attracted a great deal of interest in the students. I

remember one in particular, which was the interview

made with children for the project whose objective

was the development of a game. The children came

up with incredible insights, to which the students were

led to think really fast to accompany them.

I can assure the interdisciplinarity between the

Agency and the IHC course has been gratifying for

both the Agency and our students, and the learning

outcomes are excellent.”

6 FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

The need to integrate more and more theory and

practice from different courses of the same program

and even from other programs is essential so that

students can gain a more concrete insight into the

skills and competencies they need to develop and the

knowledge they need to build throughout their

undergraduate program.

In the experiences reported here, we have been

trying to meet this need and, with each new

experience, there are also points to be improved, new

ideas and new perspectives for this integration. We

have also sought new teaching methods to support

such interdisciplinary practice.

This semester, for instance, taking into account

the students’ request, as previously mentioned in the

Discussion section, they had to seek their partners in

the Agency, also having as challenge to “measure”

how much the current progress of each project would

favor the analysis from the point of view of HCI or

not. Following these discussions among different

teams has been fascinating. As many of them are also

taking Practice courses, they ended up “exchanging”

evaluations with their classmates (one team analyzing

the project of the other).

The challenge is constant. Each new class and

new project have their own particularities; in addition

to learning the concepts inherent to the involved

courses and developing the necessary skills and

competencies, the obstacles and problems faced along

the way (projects that are not able to meet the

expected timing, difficult-to-contact stakeholders and

users, etc.) help understand how, in real life, software

development projects work, and that so many other

skills are needed so that the agreed goals and

deadlines are achieved.

Our current goal is to increase integration with

other courses from the program, as well as the courses

from other programs. In the latter case, we have

begun the interaction with the development of

applications that are intended to other programs of the

University, to which we have the closest stakeholders

and users, favoring a quite interesting contact among

areas.

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Successful Partnership in Teaching Software

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Ensino de IHC. SBC, 15-19 (text in portuguese).

Bringing Life to the Classroom: Engaging Students through the Integration of HCI in SE Projects

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