Digital game as a learning approach to enhance practice lesson in software engineering course

Constructing an authentic environment for a practice lesson is expensive and time-consuming, though it brings more impact on students by operating real-world objects. It might be a feasible way of converting physical practice to cyber one if the practice attributes can be retained. In this study, we investigate the possibility by constructing a game-based learning environment for the software engineering course. For developing the environment, we have not only made efforts on designing animations to draw learners' attention but also reflecting real-world attributes through the game. To investigate the efficacy of this cyber practice, we conducted the experiment with 21 participants. Surprisingly the experimental result showed those students did not perform in the test as well as we expected. Even we were little disappointed by their testing result. Subsequently, we proceeded an interview for all of them and unveiled two issues often ignored by most game-based learning designers, priori domain knowledge and just-in-time reactions. It is believed that these will be the challenges in the research field. Nevertheless, all learners agree that the environment stimulated increasingly their motivation of learning the course and also inspired them what prior knowledge should be learned.