An agile boot camp: Using a LEGO®-based active game to ground agile development principles

Abstract

Industry-practiced agile methods must become an integral part of a software engineering curriculum. It is essential that graduates of such programs seeking careers in industry understand and have positive attitudes toward agile principles. With this knowledge they can participate in agile teams and apply these methods with minimal additional training. However, learning these methods takes experience and practice, both of which are difficult to achieve in a direct manner within the constraints of an academic program. This paper presents a novel, immersive boot camp approach to learning agile software engineering concepts with LEGO <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">®</sup> bricks as the medium. Students construct a physical product while inductively learning the basic principles of agile methods. The LEGO <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">®</sup> -based approach allows for multiple iterations in an active learning environment. In each iteration, students inductively learn agile concepts through their experiences and mistakes. Subsequent iterations then ground these concepts, visibly leading to an effective process. We assessed this approach using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. Our assessment shows that the students demonstrated positive attitudes toward the boot-camp approach compared to lecture-based instruction. However, the agile boot camp did not have an effect on the students' recall on class tests when compared to their recall of concepts taught in lecture-based instruction.