An Experience Report on Using LEGO-based Activities in a Software Engineering Course
Kiev Santos da Gama · 2019
As a natural social evolution, new generations tend to bring a shift in behavior and mindset. Studies have shown that millennial students prefer an active learning approach instead of traditional lectures. In Active Learning, instead of passively listening, students learn by participating in more engaging activities. As a way to gradually transition to that approach in a Software Engineering course, we started experimenting LEGO-based activities, which provide a simplified way to understand concepts that would be too large or too difficult to demonstrate if using programming languages to build software from scratch. In this paper, we present an experience report on students learning and practicing software engineering concepts using LEGO bricks in two different activities: requirements engineering and agile project management. We adapted practices taken from industry-tailored training approaches and applied them in an undergraduate course classroom, collecting feedback from students through quantitative and qualitative data. We describe the approach, the perception of students and the lessons learned while teaching using that approach.