Bringing Real-life Practice in Software Project Management Training
Through a Simulation-based Serious Game
Alejandro Calderón and Mercedes Ruiz
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Cádiz, Cádiz, Spain
Keywords: Software Project Management, Simulation, Serious Games, Bloom’s Taxonomy.
Abstract: Nowadays, we can observe a lack of tools that allow teaching and assessing in Software Project
Management in a more real-life way. In this paper, we discuss the need of developing tools to teach in the
scope of Software Project Management, and how we can achieve that learners test their knowledge and
cover the needed educational objectives, in a risk-free environment through a serious game. Hence, we
propose ProDec, a simulation-based serious game to teach and assess in software project management. This
tool is an attempt to surpass the limitations found in similar proposals. The paper also maps the stages of the
game lifecycle to the levels of Bloom’s taxonomy to show how the game helps to achieve different levels of
educational objectives.
1 INTRODUCTION
After the software crisis in the beginning of the
1970s, experts began to be aware about the
importance of software engineering as a means to
provide a set of methods, tools and procedures for
the development of quality software, within the
constraints of cost and time. However, the 2011
edition of the CHAOS report found that only 37% of
all Information Technology (IT) projects succeeded
in that they were delivered on time, within budget,
with all the required features and functions. IBM
research on the reasons for IT project failure
concluded that 54% of IT projects failures are a
direct result of poor project management.
The importance of teaching software project
management for IT learners has always been
supported by organizations such as the Association
for Computing Machinery (ACM) and IEEE-
Computer Society in their joint task force curricula.
In the Curriculum Guidelines for Undergraduate
Degree Programs in Computer Science curricula
recently released (ACM/IEEE, 2013), these
organizations have not only highlighted the
importance of this matter, but they have also
emphasized the need of teaching software project
management in a highly practical way, where
learners can test their knowledge in real-life
scenarios. By a highly practical learning, it is
intended that future practitioners acquire
professional practice during, and not after, their
studies.
However, despite the importance of training in
software project management, many authors
conclude that software project management subjects
are still basically taught following a highly
theoretical pattern and, as a consequence, learners
do not show much interest in them (Ibrahim, 2011).
Compared with other degrees, such as Medicine
or Aeronautics, IT learners start their professional
life with a serious lack of real-life practical skills. As
a result, new professionals need to develop their
experience by working in real projects, where the
effects of an inadequate plan or a bad decision can
lead to project failure or the loss of significant profit.
A serious game is a game with the purpose of
training or educating users. They can help in
situations like the one described above, as tools to
acquire experience and motivate learners, given their
engaging nature. Moreover, simulation-based
serious games allow us to bring real-life scenarios
into the learning process in a risk-free environment.
In this paper, we extend a previous work on
ProDec (Calderón & Ruiz, 2013), which is a
simulation-based serious game for software project
management training.
In the scope of this work, we address the
following research questions:
RQ1: What are the main weaknesses of current
serious games for teaching software project
117
Calderón A. and Ruiz M..
Bringing Real-life Practice in Software Project Management Training Through a Simulation-based Serious Game.
DOI: 10.5220/0004831101170124
In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2014), pages 117-124
ISBN: 978-989-758-021-5
Copyright
c
2014 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
management and how can ProDec overcome
them?
RQ2: What is the educational effectiveness of
ProDec according to Bloom’s taxonomy?
In order to answer these questions, we have
performed the following steps:
1. We have searched and analyzed the related work
on different proposals of serious games in
software project management.
2. We have defined a set of criteria to compare
these proposals and identified their strengths and
weaknesses.
3. We have evaluated ProDec using this same set of
criteria.
4. We have mapped the educational requirements
defined for each level of Bloom’s taxonomy with
the different stages of ProDec lifecycle to find
out the educational effectiveness of ProDec
according to this well-known taxonomy.
This paper is structured as follows: Section 2
presents the works related to our proposal and
provides a comparison of similar proposals Section 3
briefly reviews Bloom’s taxonomy since that
framework has been used to evaluate the coverage of
learning objectives of our proposal; Section 4
describes the serious game developed; Sections 5, 6,
and 7 show the evaluation of our proposal using
Bloom’s taxonomy; Section 8 provides information
about the state of ProDec’s evaluation process.
Finally, Section 9 summarizes the paper and
presents our conclusions and future work.
2 ANALYSIS OF CURRENT
PROPOSALS
There are several serious games in the field of
software engineering education as Caulfield, Xia,
Veal, and Maj show in their systematic review of the
literature (Caulfield et al., 2011). However, this
study also shows that the serious games that focus
on software project management are scarce and have
a quite specific scope. If we focus on the serious
games developed for the area of software project
management, the following ones are well-known
examples:
SIMSOFT (Caulfield et al., 2011) is a serious
game materialized as a printed game board, that
shows the players the flow of the game, and a
Java-based board, where the players can see the
current and historical state of the project and
adjust the project’s settings. It mainly focuses on
human resource management, with an emphasis
on how the ability of the staff affects the
outcomes of the project.
DELIVER! (Von Wangenheim et al., 2012) is
also based on a printed game board designed to
help learners develop the skills needed to
measure and control project performance by
applying the Earned Value Management
technique (Project Management Institute, 2005).
One of the main aims of this game is to motivate
students in their learning process.
SimSE (Navarro & Van Der Hoek, 2004) is a
serious game completely developed as a software
tool that is based on software project simulation.
The game supports several development
methodologies and focuses on the development
of abilities for software process management.
SESAM (Drappa & Ludewig, 2000) is another
serious game developed as a software application
that uses simulation techniques to motivate
learners in learning software project
management. Players take the role of a project
manager and must plan and control a simulated
project.
The Project Manager Game (Games by Robc,
2013) is an online serious game where users have
to allocate the most suitable staff to particular
tasks and complete their project on time within
the allocated budget.
In order to perform a comparison of these
proposals and also to identify their strengths and
weaknesses, we propose the following set of
features. These features are based on our analysis
and also on the ones used by Caulfield and his
colleagues (Caulfield et al., 2011).
a) F1. Coverage of software project lifecycle, that
is, the phases of the project lifecycle the game
deals with.
b) F2. Coverage of the Project Management Body
of Knowledge (PMBOK) (Project Management
Institute, 2013), that is, the different processes
and techniques described in the PMBOK that the
game helps to learn and practice with.
c) F3. Support of revised Bloom’s taxonomy
(Krathwohl, 2002), that is, the level of coverage
of each level of Bloom’s taxonomy the game
offers.
d) F4. Support for automatic learning assessment,
that is, the level to which the game helps trainers
to assess the learners automatically.
e) F5. Simulation-based, that is, if the game makes
use of simulation techniques, and to which
extend.
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f) F6. Game flexibility, that is, if the scenarios of
the game are static or they can change
dynamically during the game play.
Table 1 summarizes the comparison of the
serious games previously described. In this table, the
columns represent the serious games analyzed and
the rows are the set of features already defined
According to the PMBOK, created by the Project
Management Institute (PMI), the project lifecycle is
defined by five stages: Initiation, Planning,
Controlling & Monitoring, Executing and Closing.
Those stages give also name to the five groups of
management processes that need to be carried out
with the help of techniques. All the serious games
analyzed focus on a specific stage of the project
lifecycle (F1) and/or help to practice a specific
process or technique in that stage (F2). None of the
games analyzed give learners the possibility of
studying the complete lifecycle of a project from the
initiating stage, where the project characteristics are
defined, to the closing stage, where the project ends
and it is the time for analyzing the results and
deriving the lessons learnt.
If we compare the educational objectives that
can be achieved by using these games with a well-
known taxonomy of learning objectives such as
Bloom’s taxonomy, we can conclude that only
SIMSOFT covers all the levels of the taxonomy.
Regarding the assessment of the skills that
learners acquire by using the games (F4), all the
games analyzed use traditional methods for learners’
assessment, and none of them includes an automatic
process of gathering and analyzing information
about the game play to support an automatic
assessment. Furthermore, only two out of the five
games analyzed make use of simulation as a means
to add realism to the game scenarios (F5). However,
the two games that make use of simulation provide
scenarios supported by static simulation models.
This means that the scenarios the player can play are
fixed offering a poor flexibility and leading to an
early loss of player’s motivation.
From the analysis of the current proposals of
serious games for teaching software project
management, we found that their main weaknesses
are:
They focus on learning specific techniques of
project management or specific stages of the
project’s lifecycle.
They do not usually reach all levels of Bloom’s
taxonomy.
They do not allow to assess learner’s new skills
automatically.
They do not offer flexibility.
Taking this analysis into account, we can
conclude that further research is needed to overcome
the weaknesses found in the application of serious
games for software project management. For this
reason, in this paper, we propose ProDec, a serious
game designed to overcome these weaknesses.
Table 1: Comparison of serious games for software project management.
Serious Game SIMSOFT SESAM SimSE DELIVER!
The Project
Manager
Game
Coverage of
software project
lifecycle (F1)
Planning,
Controlling &
Monitoring
Planning,
Execution,
Controlling &
Monitoring
Planning,
Execution,
Controlling &
Monitoring
Monitoring Planning
Coverage of
PMBOK (F2)
Staff management
Staff
management
Staff
management
Earned Value
Analysis
Staff
management
Coverage of
Bloom’s taxonomy
(F3)
All levels Knowledge Knowledge Application Application
Support for
automatic
assessment (F4)
Not allow to obtain automatic assessment reports
Simulation-based
(F5)
No Yes Yes No No
Game flexibility
(F6)
Statically scenarios provided by the game
Static board
scenario
Random
scenarios
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3 BLOOM’S TAXONOMY
Bloom's Taxonomy (Bloom et al, 1956) is a widely
accepted classification of learning objectives within
education. It constitutes a common framework for
learning proposals’ assessment and comparison. In
the world of serious games, this taxonomy is also
used for these aims. For this reason, we have also
chosen Bloom's taxonomy to assess the educational
objectives that our proposal can reach.
Bloom’s taxonomy refers to a classification of
the different objectives that educators set for
learners. It divides educational objectives into three
domains: Cognitive, Affective, and Psychomotor. If
we focus on the Cognitive domain, where skills
revolve around knowledge, comprehension, and
critical thinking on a particular topic, we find six
levels sorted in a hierarchy. These levels, in
ascending order, are shown below:
Knowledge, the subject is able to recall
previously learnt information. They recognize
information, ideas, facts, dates, etc. in an
approximate way as they have learnt.
Comprehension, the subject is able to
demonstrate the understanding of facts and ideas
by organizing, comparing, translating,
interpreting, giving descriptions, and stating the
main ideas.
Application, the subject is able to solve problems
in new situations by applying acquired
knowledge, facts, techniques and rules in a
different way.
Analysis, the subject is able to examine and
break information into parts by identifying
motives or causes, and they are able to make
inferences and find evidence to support
generalizations.
Synthesis, the subject is able to create, integrate,
combine ideas, pose and propose new ways of
doing. They are able to apply previous
knowledge and skills to produce something new
or original.
Evaluation, the subject is able to make judgments
about information, validity of ideas or quality of
work according to personal opinions based on a
set of criteria.
A revision of Bloom's taxonomy (Anderson &
Krathwohl, 2001) establishes that in the cognitive
domain there are six levels but not all are sequential
in a hierarchical order. This revision proposes that
the three lower levels are sorted in a hierarchical
way, but the other three, the higher levels, are placed
in parallel levels.
Like Caulfield, Xia, Veal, and Maj show in their
serious games review (Caulfield et al, 2011) that the
majority of authors in this scope are satisfied with
placing their educational objectives at the basic
levels of Bloom’s taxonomy, even some of the
proposals only reach the Knowledge one. The only
exception that we found is SIMSOFT that reaches
the higher levels of the taxonomy.
In the following sections we describe the
different stages of ProDec and we perform an
analysis of Bloom’s taxonomy levels that our
proposal satisfies.
4 PRODEC OVERVIEW
ProDec is a serious game to teach and assess
learners in software project management. Its main
goal is that learners acquire decision-making skills
on problems that can appear within a software
project lifecycle. Consequently, it helps learners
start their professional career with some practical
abilities for their profession.
The aim of the game is to successfully manage a
software project. The game is over when the project
significantly overruns either the approved budget or
the allocated time. The player wins when they are
able to complete the project within the time and cost
limits. Besides, ProDec not only focusses on
problem solving during the executing and
controlling stages of a software project, but it also
invites players to fully plan their own project and
then monitor and control its progress by simulating
its execution.
At the same time, ProDec helps trainers in the
assessment of the skills that learners must acquire by
playing the game. To do this, ProDec accepts the
assessment criteria as an input of the trainer, and
automatically: a) gathers data about these criteria
during the game plays, b) analyzes the data
collected, and c) shows an assessment report for the
learner and the trainer.
ProDec is a game to be played in teams, so that it
can also help to develop some soft skills in project
management such as leadership and communication
skills. Actually, ProDec does not teach learners the
basic principles of software project management.
Before playing, the players need to acquire these
principles in lectures. Therefore, ProDec is a tool to
be used in advanced stages of an academic course.
Although the game is thought to be used by teams, it
can also be played individually.
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4.1 Lifecycle
ProDec offers players two ways of playing, a full
game and a quick game. In a full game, players
begin a project from scratch while, in a quick game,
players can select one of the scenarios previously
uploaded by the trainer. In this second case, players
can only practice their project monitoring and
controlling skills. Disregarding the mode of playing,
players go through different stages of the project
lifecycle with the goal of ending a project
successfully. Within the game, there are three phases
of a game play’s lifecycle, which are Onset,
Execution and End phases.
The following sections further describe the
functionality associated with each phase of the game
and the level of coverage of the learning objectives
according with Bloom’s taxonomy.
5 ONSET PHASE
ProDec's Onset phase is the first contact that learners
have with the game. If the players select to play a
quick game, they have to go through the different
project scenarios available in the game and read and
evaluate each project’s features. In this case, learners
need to know the main concepts and principles about
software project management and need to
understand the information and data that the game
shows, so that they can get an idea about the
difficulty of each proposed project scenarios. So, in
this phase, learners need to remember and
comprehend the information provided about the
software projects to begin the play successfully. In
this way, Knowledge and Comprehension levels of
Bloom's taxonomy are covered.
On the other hand, if players select to play a full
game, they follow a process that guides them in
making the software project plan. This process is
made of five sequential stages and allows learners to
provide all the data needed to create a new software
project plan. The stages that make this process are
the following: project information, size estimation,
project team definition, tasks definition and risks
analysis.
5.1 Project Information
Project Information is the first stage of the process
of creation of a software project plan. In this stage,
learners have to enter the general information of the
project about its scope and features, such as the
salary of the workers, the length of the project, the
numbers of use cases, etc., that are necessary to
begin the size estimation stage. In order to do this
task, learners need to know and understand the
different concepts about software project
information that the game uses. If learners do not
know or understand properly these issues, it is likely
that they will end up in a failed game, as it happens
in real life, where a project misinterpretation leads to
a failed project. The training about the concepts used
in the phase of the game has to be offered during the
lessons taken before playing. As in this stage, in all
the next stages of this process learners need to know,
properly understand and remember the concepts
learnt in the lectures, so that the data they provide to
the game is consistent. Hence we can see that
Knowledge and Comprehension levels of Bloom's
taxonomy are covered by the game.
5.2 Size Estimation
In this stage, players provide the estimate of the size
of the project starting with the total number of use
cases. Then, learners need to calculate and enter the
size of each use case. To estimate the size of each
use case, learners use Albrecht's Function Point
Analysis (Albrecht, 1979). A function point is a unit
of measurement to express the amount of
functionality of an information system. In this stage
of the game, learners need to apply their knowledge
to calculate the different size of the use cases before
entering the data to continue. Consequently, the
Application level of Bloom's taxonomy is covered.
Besides, in this stage learners apply Albrecht’s
technique and get the results of under- or over-
estimating in real-life project scenario, which is a
different situation to the traditional one focused on
blackboard activities.
5.3 Project Team Definition
During this stage, learners design their project team
by defining its members. For each team member,
players have to select some features for their
personality and past work experience. Currently, the
personality of an employee is made of two traits that
the player has to select from a range of twenty two
available ones. The set of personality traits included
in the game is based on the sixteen personality
factors described by Cattell (Cattell et al. 1988). In
this stage, the game helps learners to think about the
different outcomes of mixing personalities in a team
and the importance of achieving a good team
synergy in a successful project.
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5.4 Tasks Definition
Once the size has been estimated and the project
team designed, the following stage asks players to
define the project tasks. In this stage of the process,
players define the project tasks, and enter, for each
of them, the time data, the budget allocated, and its
predecessor tasks. Consequently, this stage asks the
player to provide the information gathered in a
PERT diagram (Moder, 1983) of the project. PERT
technique is recommended in PMBOK’s Time and
Cost knowledge areas and it is included in the
Project Management Professional (PMP) exam. This
function allows learners to apply their knowledge
about PERT diagrams in real-life scenarios and to
analyze its features within a project unlike more
traditional approaches where knowledge is
exclusively acquired by solving individual exercises
during the lectures. Besides, in this stage, players
have also to allocate tasks to the team members. To
do this successfully, they need to analyze all the
information entered about the tasks description and
the personality traits and work experience of the
team members with the aim of allocating the most
suitable staff to each task. It can be seen that the
Analysis level of Bloom's taxonomy appears in this
stage of the game.
5.5 Risk Analysis
The last stage of the process that players follow to
make the software project plan is the risk assessment
and analysis. As its name indicates, in this step, the
players perform the quantitative analysis of the risks
that can appear along the execution of the project. In
a quantitative risk analysis, players need to enter the
risk probability and the loss magnitude for every risk
identified. The risk probability is the likelihood of
occurrence of a risk. The loss magnitude is the
potential loss the project may suffer in the case that
the risk appears and it is not properly controlled.
Later, these risks will be transformed into events of
the simulation model. The probability that these
risks occur is defined by the risk probability. The
loss magnitude establishes the time delay that the
tasks being performed at the moment when the event
occurs suffer.
Based on the knowledge acquired in the lectures
and the information entered about the project, the
players are required to analyze the project within its
scope with the aim of making a proper list of the
risks to be taken into account. Again, we can see
how the Analysis level of Bloom’s taxonomy is
covered.
Along all the onset phase, learners have to analyze
all the elements of each stage to get information and
synthesize this information into new ideas and
decisions to make. Moreover, given the social
character of the game, before making a decision
such as allocating staff to a task or defining the
probability of a risk, players need to analyze the
information of the project to argue, defend, discuss,
evaluate, negotiate and agree the best decision
within their team to make a good project plan. This
feature allows the learner to work at the highest
levels of Bloom’s taxonomy which are Synthesis
and Evaluation. Hence by playing a full game,
ProDec provides a full coverage of Bloom's
taxonomy.
6 EXECUTION PHASE
The second step consists on executing the project
created or selected in the previous phase. To support
this project lifecycle phase, ProDec automatically
generates a source code file with the equations of a
discrete-event simulation model that simulates the
project described in the first phase of the game. In
addition, the file also contains the source code of the
user interface for the specific simulation model
generated. It is important to notice that this feature
helps ProDec achieve a high level of flexibility
given that the number of different projects that can
be simulated is unlimited.
To achieve this flexibility, we have performed a
reverse engineering process. We have analyzed how
the simulation software used implements the
elements of a discrete-event simulation model, and
then, we have generalized the procedure with the
aim of building the simulation models in an
automatic way. Working like this, ProDec is able of
simulate any project plan the players create
overcoming the lack of flexibility found in other
proposals previously described.
Once the source code of the simulation model is
generated, the simulation model is launched and the
players start managing the project. During the
simulation of the project execution, the game shows
the players several screens where the progress of the
project is presented and different actions are
provided to control the project. In this phase,
learners practice two main concepts. On the one
hand, they put into practice their knowledge about
the Earned Value Analysis (EVA) for monitoring the
progress of the project.
On the other hand, the learners practice their
decision-making skills by correcting the potential
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deviations of the progress of the project from the
goal of ending the project within the time and
budget. If a corrective action is needed, players
select it from a set of actions such as hire a team
member or reorganize the project team.
In this phase of the game, players need to
analyze the information presented in different
screens for controlling and monitoring the progress
of the execution of the project. For this, learners use
their knowledge about software project management
to understand the information about the progress of
the project provided by the game. They also have to
analyze, create, discuss, argue, evaluate and
negotiate within their team to agree on the best
decisions in each moment. In this stage, the game
also presents a full coverage of the six levels of
Bloom's taxonomy.
7 END PHASE
The last phase consists on the players’ assessment.
By using the information that ProDec has been
recording during the game play and the
assessment criteria established by the instructor,
ProDec generates an assessment report of the
learners describing their level of achievement.
These information records come from several
sources within the game such as the project plan
with the initial estimates, the project monitoring data
and the kind of decisions that the players made
during the play.
The assessment criteria are provided by the
instructor in the form of a rubric. An assessment
criterion links the information recorded in the rubric
with the information recorded during the game. By
using a labelling system the labels describing the
skills of an assessment criterion are matched with
the records of the game that contain the information
needed to assess such criterion.
As a consequence, ProDec is able to perform the
learners’ assessment by analyzing the information
recorded during the game and applying the
assessment criteria set by the instructor, concluding
with the generation of a detailed assessment report
that describes the skills acquired by the players.
The generated report allows players to analyze
the course of the game play with the aim of learning
about their experience. At this point, learners can
learn from their own mistakes and can analyze the
events occurred along the game to get new
knowledge and generate new ideas for future plays.
In this stage, the highest levels of Bloom’s
taxonomy are also covered.
8 CONCLUSIONS
In Section 2, we presented a comparison between
several serious games attending to a set of features
considered to be of importance in a game for
software project management training. We showed
that none of the analyzed games fully satisfies all the
mentioned features. In this paper, we proposed
ProDec, a simulation-based serious game for
software project management, which aims to teach,
assess and motivate learners in learning and
practicing the principles of software project
management as well as improving some important
soft skills, like project leadership, in a risk-free
environment provided by project. Thus, learners can
experiment their abilities with real life scenarios
without costs or risks.
ProDec has been developed with the aim of
having a tool that satisfies all the criteria that other
serious games in the field do not cover. Therefore,
ProDec is a serious game that:
a) Opposite to the majority of the serious games in
the field, which are focused on a specific stage of
the project lifecycle or the training of a specific
technique, allows learning along the whole
project lifecycle. To achieve this, players can
start a software project plan from scratch,
improve their skills in decision-making, analyze
the log of games played in the past, etc. ProDec
offers a sufficient coverage of all the levels of
Bloom’s taxonomy, from the Onset stage until
the End stage of the game lifecycle.
b) ProDec also allows trainers to assess the
learners’ skills through the information reports
that the tool generate during the game play.
Besides, at the end of a play, ProDec
automatically provides an assessment report with
detailed information about the events occurred in
the game. Learners can then analyze their game
experience to achieve new knowledge and
improve their abilities in software project
management.
Finally, ProDec is a simulation-based serious
game. This means that it uses simulation to execute
the software projects, planned by learners and
instructors, so that players can practice decision-
making in the scope of project controlling and
monitoring processes. As a remarkable feature,
ProDec generates in real time the source code of the
specific discrete-event simulation model for the
created or selected project together with the
appropriate user interface. This feature makes
ProDec a completely flexible tool regarding the
BringingReal-lifePracticeinSoftwareProjectManagementTrainingThroughaSimulation-basedSeriousGame
123
unlimited project scenarios that can be simulated,
and, therefore, played.
To sum up, along this paper we have shown how
ProDec is a flexible tool, covers the levels of
Bloom’s taxonomy, allows players to take contact
with all the lifecycle of a project and helps
professors to assess learner's skills, overcoming the
weaknesses identified in current proposals,
answering to our first research question. Besides, we
have analyzed how ProDec reaches the six levels of
Bloom's taxonomy by analyzing the player’s
behavior ProDec demands at its different lifecycle
stages, answering, this way, our second research
question.
Our aim is to create a tool to support the
effective practical training of the processes of
software project management. We believe that this
kind of tool is needed to prepare the new
practitioners for their professional life in the best
possible way. For this reason, we are currently
working to improve the features of ProDec to
increase learners' soft skills such as project
leadership, motivation, engagement and
competitiveness. To achieve these goals, we are also
studying the benefits of integrating our game with
social networks and adopting gamification strategies
for enriching the learning process.
Moreover during the first semester of 2014 the
tool is being evaluated with real learners. The
lessons learnt from this process will be used to
measure the effectiveness of the learning and
assessment processes when using ProDec and to
improve the game.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work has been partially supported by the
Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology with
ERDF funds under grant TIN2010-20057-C03-03.
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