One Block on Top of the Other: Using Minetest to Teach Scrum

Abstract

Pauses in typing are generally considered to indicate cognitive processing and so are of interest in educational contexts. While much prior work has looked at typing behavior of Computer Science students, this paper presents results of a study specifically on the pausing behavior of students in Introductory Computer Programming. We investigate the frequency of pauses of different lengths, what last actions students take before pausing, and whether there is a correlation between pause length and performance in the course. We find evidence that frequency of pauses of all lengths is negatively correlated with performance, and that, while some keystrokes initiate pauses consistently across pause lengths, other keystrokes more commonly initiate short or long pauses. Clustering analysis discovers two groups of students, one that takes relatively fewer mid-to-long pauses and performs better on exams than the other. CCS CONCEPTS• Social and professional topics → Computing education.

Serious Games in Higher Education in the Transforming Process to Education 4.0—Systematized Review

“…Games whose serious goal is to teach skills are considered by the authors to be helpful in terms of the game goal. An online Serious Game is described by Steghöfer and Burden as an effective teaching method for the SCRUM method [34]. The same is true for the game to improve the ability to take good notes [27].…”

“…The findings indicate that game designs often align with the serious objectives while the playful aspects are typically crafted at the developers' discretion, ensuring consistency in the game rules. In some instances, games were modeled after existing non-Serious Games, such as Minetest [34]. Customization of games can facilitate goal achievement, highlighting the advantage of developing Serious Games in interdisciplinary teams [51][52][53].…”

“…The majority of the games are realized as a desktop computer game (n = 7) or online or web app (n = 9). Apart from games outside a specific subject area, desktop games are mostly used in the field of medicine [27,40,41,43], while online/web app games are often used in computer science [29,30,[33][34][35]. Two games describe a setup where teams work with computers but the game takes place in presence [24,45,46].…”

“…Two games impart knowledge about SCRUM, a procedure that structures the development of software in teams. Steghöfer and Burden [34] focus on teaching the necessary knowledge and skills, while Gordillo et al [50] use and compare different methods for teaching.…”

Examining and Comparing the Effectiveness of Virtual Reality Serious Games and LEGO Serious Play for Learning Scrum

“…Similarly, ref. [42] adapted a LEGO Serious Play activity aimed at teaching Scrum to be used with Minetest, an open-source variant of the Minecraft game.…”