Serious Games and LEGO Serious Play for Scrum: Comparison
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Please note this is a comparison between Version 2 by Camila Xu and Version 1 by Aldo Gordillo.

As evidenced by recent literature reviews, virtual reality is being widely used for educational purposes in many knowledge fields and industrial sectors because this technology contributes to improve knowledge acquisition and skills development, engages and motivates learners, and enhances the whole learning experience.

  • game-based learning
  • virtual reality
  • educational games
  • serious games
  • technology-enhanced learning

1. Introduction

A considerable effort has been and continues to be devoted to search for new alternatives to improve and complement traditional learning methodologies. In recent years, game-based learning has become one of the most promising learning approaches due to its potential to increase not only students’ motivation but also students’ learning. As evidenced by several recent literature reviews [1,2[1][2][3][4][5][6][7],3,4,5,6,7], a plethora of studies reported successful game-based learning experiences. This evidence allows the conclusion that, when game-based learning is suitably applied, it can lead to enhancements in both students’ motivation and learning outcomes.
However, although a lot of research work has been conducted in the game-based learning field, a closer look at this work reveals that not all types of game-based learning approaches have been extensively investigated. For example, despite there being plenty of studies examining the educational use of videogames [1[1][2][3][4][5][6][7],2,3,4,5,6,7], much less research has been conducted to examine the use of educational videogames based on virtual reality or game-based learning activities based on LEGO Serious Play.

2. Serious Games Based on Virtual Reality

As evidenced by recent literature reviews, virtual reality is being widely used for educational purposes in many knowledge fields and industrial sectors because this technology contributes to improve knowledge acquisition and skills development, engages and motivates learners, and enhances the whole learning experience [9,10,11][8][9][10]. Some works have reported the use of virtual reality serious games by practitioners in professional contexts, including games to simulate medical operations [12][11], operate control panels in power plants [13][12], and conduct psychological exposure therapies [14][13]. Furthermore, some works have reported the use of this kind of game in educational settings, including games for learning languages and culture [15][14], physics [16][15], engineering [17][16], and topics related to computer science such as computer programming [18][17]. In this regard, it is worth mentioning ScrumVR [19[18][19][20],20,21], a virtual reality serious game for Scrum training. In addition to ScrumVR, other virtual reality serious games aimed to teach the Scrum framework have been reported in the literature [22,23,24][21][22][23]. In the game presented by Caserman et al. [22][21], the player controls a Scrum Master that must guide their team throughout a Sprint. Radhakrishnan and Koumaditis [23][22] proposed the creation of a multiplayer virtual reality environment for simulating Sprints. However, a full implementation or validation of this system was not reported in that work. In a more recent work, Visescu et al. [24][23] presented ScrumSim, a multiplayer simulation in which players, with the assistance of two avatars who play the roles of the Scrum Master and the Product Owner, interact with a virtual reality environment, perform tasks, and receive feedback on their performance. Although ScrumSim has been used in real-world settings, a formal evaluation has not yet been reported.

3. LEGO Serious Play

LEGO Serious Play [25][24] is a learning methodology initially designed to teach professionals in a playful and active way soft skills such as leadership, communication, and conflict resolution. However, in the last decades this methodology has evolved substantially [26][25] and it is being applied in higher education across many knowledge fields. Indeed, LEGO Serious Play activities have been used in fields as diverse as marketing [27][26], arts [28][27], industrial engineering [29][28], and systems engineering [30][29]. These contributions indicate that LEGO Serious Play can be used not only to learn soft skills, but also to learn specific competences in many fields of knowledge, including software engineering. Several LEGO Serious Play activities have been designed to teach concepts related to software engineering. A very prolific author in this area is Kurkovsky [31,32,33,34[30][31][32][33][34],35], whose works present activities to teach requirements engineering [31,32][30][31], complex systems dependability [31][30], component integration, and software interface design [33][32], Test-Driven Development (TDD) [34][33], and Scrum [35][34]. The conclusion of these contributions is that this learning methodology is useful to learn specific competences about software engineering, develop soft skills, and improve students’ motivation. In the same vein, [36][35] describes a LEGO Serious play activity which proved to be highly appealing and motivating from the students’ perspective and effective to learn about software life-cycle models and software development activities. Another remarkable LEGO Serious play activity in the software engineering field is LEGO City, which was conceived by Krivitsky [37][36] and serves to teach the Scrum framework. In his book [37][36], this author presents guidelines to conduct the activity as well as empirical experiences reporting positive outcomes. Beyond the experiences described by Krivitsky himself, this activity has been adapted and replicated by other researchers in professionals and higher education contexts. For example, ref. [38][37] used the LEGO City activity with professionals of Croatian IT companies, ref. [39][38] with students of a computer science degree delivered by the University of Pernambuco (Brazil), and ref. [40][39] with students of a software project management master degree delivered by the Aalto University (Finland). In every case, the authors found out that the LEGO City activity was very well appreciated by the participants and highly effective to learn about Scrum. Another interesting experience is the one reported by [41][40], who adapted the LEGO City activity to be performed remotely using online whiteboards and real-time communication tools. Similarly, ref. [42][41] adapted a LEGO Serious Play activity aimed at teaching Scrum to be used with Minetest, an open-source variant of the Minecraft game.

4. Scrum Training

As described in the previous subsections, virtual reality serious games [19,20,21,22,23,24][18][19][20][21][22][23] and LEGO Serious Play activities [35,37,38,39,40,41,42][34][36][37][38][39][40][41] have been used to deliver Scrum training. Moreover, other noteworthy alternatives have been used for this purpose, including serious video games not based on virtual reality [43[42][43][44],44,45], physical games [46[45][46][47],47,48], agile project management tools [49][48], and classroom exercises [50][49]. Scrum-X [43][42] is a game developed in Microsoft Excel 365 with VBA programming designed to teach Scrum to graduates and professionals in which players can manage software projects. Another serious video game for learning Scrum is Virtual Scrum [45][44]. In this game, players can explore and interact with a virtual world that simulates the room of a Scrum team. In [44][43], an online Scrum simulation conducted by using the multiplayer video game “Don’t Starve Together”, Trello, and Discord is presented. In addition to video games, some physical games aimed at teaching Scrum have been designed such as the card games PlayScrum [46][45] and “Don’t Break the Build” [47][46]. Another physical game to teach Scrum was proposed by [48][47]. In this game, players organized in groups must build paper boats, hats, and planes following the Scrum framework. Another approach that has been adopted for Scrum training is the planning and monitoring of software projects through agile project management tools such as Taiga [49][48]. Lastly, it is also worth mentioning that some classroom exercises have been proposed for introducing Scrum. For example, ref. [50][49] proposed “Play Ball”, an exercise targeted to undergraduates that only requires 20–30 hand-size balls per team and that aims to introduce students to basic Scrum concepts and allow them to practice self-organization.

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