LEGO® Serious Play in Software Engineering Education

Abstract

Nowadays, it is mandatory to complement the traditional learning methods with active ones that enhance the student’s motivation and facilitate the development of technical and soft competences. LEGO®Serious Play is an experiential methodology designed to enhance innovation and performance in the business world and it is fully aligned with these needs. Previous researches show that this methodology has great potential in engineering education, and specifically in software engineering education. This paper presents an original LEGO®Serious Play activity to teach in a playful and active way software engineering concepts such as life cycle models and software development activities, which can be extrapolated to other engineering fields. This activity was validated through a case study involving 242 computer science students and it was supported by quantitative and qualitative data gathered from a survey and a post-test. The results indicate that the students found this activity highly fun and motivating as well as very useful to learn about the addressed topics and develop soft skills.

Keywords

• Software engineering education
• LEGO serious play
• gamification
• active learning