Challenge Based Learning Applied to Mobile Software Development Teaching

Abstract

The growth of the mobile device market has generated a demand for specific applications and the consequent need for labor training to develop them. Such demand has as a direct consequence, a growing need for training of application developers. This work presents the use of the active learning methodology Challenge Based Learning (CBL) for the teaching of software development for mobile devices. The use of CBL for little more than a year in four classes of a free course with 110 students is presented. Some difficulties appeared and were solved with proposed actions. The results are obtained from objective and subjective evaluations and analyzed through thematic networks. Among the positive results CBL helps in understanding the problems to be solved and in its solution and has motivated students more than other methods. CBL showed to be an interesting active learning methodology for teaching Mobile Software Development and promising to be applied in other areas.