Comparing two active learning strategies for teaching scrum in an introductory software engineering course

Abstract

Active learning comprises any process in which students are actively engaged in building understanding of facts, ideas, and skills through instructor-directed tasks and activities undertaken mainly during classes. In this paper we presented results from a comparison of two active learning strategies to teach the agile Scrum framework in the context of an introductory software engineering course. The comparison was carried out through a quasi-experiment in which participants were divided into two groups. The first group used the strategy of active reading on basic concepts of Scrum, while for the other group a game was used; representing two teaching strategies for active learning. The results gave indications at the population level that there are significant differences in the concepts learned by the members of both groups and ratifies the use of active learning strategies to teach Scrum. The results provided empirical evidence indicating that using various active learning strategies facilitates the retention and appropriation of concepts related to Scrum and offer teachers a point of reference about the effectiveness of these two strategies of active learning to teach Scrum concepts.