Active Learning in Software Engineering: A Rapid Review

Context: Software Engineering solves real world problems and thus requires future engineers to amass experience solving problems in authentic contexts during their formal education. Active learning provides learning contexts where students can acquire experience by doing contextualized and meaningful activities that involve high-order thinking. Despite active learning being proved to be more effective providing hands-on experience in software engineering situations traditional learning activities such as lectures still rival the former. Objectives: Identify and define what active learning strategies are used in software engineering higher education (1) and what application experiences of such strategies have been conducted between 2018 and 2023 (2). Method: A secondary study with Rapid Review as a research method. A Rapid Review is a secondary study which balances literature search breadth and resources available with the purpose of accelerating a systematic mapping study. Results: 18 active learning strategies on software engineering were found across 49 studies. Games and Project-Based Learning were the most frequently used strategies. Conclusions: There are diverse active learning strategies used in software engineering higher education. Active learning strategies can be deployed in varied higher education settings and promote competencies development. Active learning strategies can be combined with other active learning strategies as well as combined with traditional learning activities like lectures in order to foster both lower and higher order thinking skills.