Quality of Games for Teaching Software Engineering: An Analysis of Empirical Evidences of Digital and Non-Digital Games

Educational games have been used as an innovative instructional strategy in order to achieve learning more effectively in Software Engineering (SE) education. However, it is essential to systematically evaluate such games in order to obtain sound evidence on their benefits. And, although, several SE games have been evaluated adopting diverse research designs and measurements, so far no larger scale study across different games has been conducted. In this respect, this article presents a comprehensive analysis in order to summarize empirical evidence on the benefits of digital and non-digital games used for SE education. The analysis is based on data collected from 43 case studies that use MEEGA, the most commonly used model for educational game evaluation, evaluating 20 different SE games, involving a total population of 723 students. Our analysis indicate evidence that digital and non-digital games can yield a positive effect on the learning of SE, providing a pleasant and engaging experience to the students and motivate them. Our analysis also points out that non-digital games more easily seem to promote a more positive experience, principally in terms of fun and social interaction than the digital ones used for teaching SE. These results may guide SE instructors in the selection of educational games as instructional methods and guide game creators with respect to the development of new games.