eMadrid seminar on «Serious games applied to teaching in software engineering», organized by UCM Author: Wishnu Prasetya, researcher and lecturer at Utrech University (Países Bajos)

1. Adding some Fun in Teaching
Formal Specifications with
Gamification
E R A S M U S + Project 2017-1-NL01-KA203-
035259
Wishnu Prasetya
IMPRESS Project
https://impress-project.eu/

2. Software engineers should write
formal specifications.

5. But teaching formal specification to
students is not easy
boolean hasCommonMember(int[ ] a, int[ ] b)

6. Learning formal specification is not easy,
because it is a dry subject
● Learning to write pre and post-conditions, with fun
● Constructionism approach to learning

7. The FormalZ Game

8. The Game

9. Constructionist Formalization

10. Feedback
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+Bad data, marked Good data, not marked
+Good data, marked

11. AnalyticsAnalytics

12. Experience
● Students generally appreciate the concept
> they also learn!
● Integrating it into a class requires careful planning, e.g. :
> we have a tight scheduled course (7.5 EC in 10 weeks!)
> a dedicated session where students are not distracted work much
better
● As a proof of concept this is fine. Scaling up should be delegated to
professional game developers:
> the engineering is not trivial
> balancing is delicate (fun vs education value)
> maintenance is not trivial

13. Future work
● Continuing our study
● Exploring other forms of fun-constructionism