Is role playing in Requirements Engineering Education increasing learning outcome?

• Published in: Requirements engineering Vol. 22; no. 4; pp. 475 - 489
• Main Authors: Svensson, Richard Berntsson, Regnell, Björn
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Springer London 01.11.2017; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Colleges & universities; Computer aided software engineering; Computer and Information Sciences; Computer Science; Data- och informationsvetenskap (Datateknik); Educational Sciences; Empirical analysis; Engineering; Engineering education; Original Article; Pedagogik; Pedagogy; psychology; Quality; Requirements analysis; Requirements Engineering; Requirements Engineering Education; Role playing; Samhällsvetenskap; simulation games; Skills; Social Sciences; Software Engineering; student; Students; Utbildningsvetenskap; Requirements Engineering Education; Role playing; Requirements Engineering
• ISSN: 0947-3602; 1432-010X; 1432-010X
• DOI: 10.1007/s00766-016-0248-4

Requirements Engineering has attracted a great deal of attention from researchers and practitioners in recent years. This increasing interest requires academia to provide students with a solid foundation in the subject matter. In Requirements Engineering Education (REE), it is important to cover three fundamental topics: traditional analysis and modeling skills, interviewing skills for requirements elicitation, and writing skills for specifying requirements. REE papers report about using role playing as a pedagogical tool; however, there is a surprising lack of empirical evidence on its utility. In this paper we investigate whether a higher grade in a role playing project have an effect on students’ score in an individual written exam in a Requirements Engineering course. Data are collected from 412 students between the years of 2007 and 2014 at Lund University and Chalmers | University of Gothenburg. The results show that students who received a higher grade in the role playing project scored statistically significant higher in the written exam compared to the students with a lower role playing project grade.