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Teaching Software Engineering with LEGO Serious Play

Published: 22 June 2015 Publication History

Abstract

LEGO Serious Play (LSP) is a methodology that helps people brainstorm and discuss complex ideas through storytelling and metaphors. LSP has been successfully applied in higher education as a mechanism for team building and promoting creativity. In this paper, we discuss using LSP to teach several core software engineering topics through hands-on case studies. Initial results suggest that LSP has a positive impact on student learning, while also improving student engagement with the course material. This paper describes the details of two LSP-based case studies along with many practical aspects of using LSP to teach software engineering.

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cover image ACM Conferences
ITiCSE '15: Proceedings of the 2015 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education
June 2015
370 pages
ISBN:9781450334402
DOI:10.1145/2729094
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 22 June 2015

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  1. LEGO serious play
  2. case studies
  3. software engineering

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ITICSE '15
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ITiCSE '15 Paper Acceptance Rate 54 of 124 submissions, 44%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 552 of 1,613 submissions, 34%

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Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education
June 27 - July 2, 2025
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Cited By

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  • (2025)Examining the use of LEGO Serious Play to enhance postgraduate research capacityHumanities and Social Sciences Communications10.1057/s41599-024-03930-512:1Online publication date: 19-Feb-2025
  • (2024)Cultivating Creativity and Improving Coding Skills in Primary School Students via Domain-General and Domain-Specific Learning ScaffoldingsEducation Sciences10.3390/educsci1407069514:7(695)Online publication date: 26-Jun-2024
  • (2024)Examining and Comparing the Effectiveness of Virtual Reality Serious Games and LEGO Serious Play for Learning ScrumApplied Sciences10.3390/app1402083014:2(830)Online publication date: 18-Jan-2024
  • (2024)Moving beyond western methods: a methodological toolbox for family entrepreneurship research in tourism by including children's voicesFrontiers in Sustainable Tourism10.3389/frsut.2023.12946442Online publication date: 17-Jan-2024
  • (2024)Extraction and Application of Introspection using Lego® Serious Play® Combined with Software Method2024 IEEE/ACIS 22nd International Conference on Software Engineering Research, Management and Applications (SERA)10.1109/SERA61261.2024.10685560(300-303)Online publication date: 30-May-2024
  • (2024)Play Bricks IV: Desktop and Web-Based Play Bricks App for Architectural Styles2024 18th International Conference on Ubiquitous Information Management and Communication (IMCOM)10.1109/IMCOM60618.2024.10418274(1-7)Online publication date: 3-Jan-2024
  • (2024)Comparing a LEGO® Serious Play Activity With a Traditional Lecture in Software Engineering EducationIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2024.340350412(74045-74053)Online publication date: 2024
  • (2024)UNLOCKING STUDENT CREATIVITY WITH LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY: A CASE STUDY FROM THE GRADUATE MARKETING CLASSROOMMarketing Education Review10.1080/10528008.2024.233792634:2(153-163)Online publication date: 9-Apr-2024
  • (2023)From Difficulties to Functional Requirements - Deriving Requirements from Literature about Tool-supported Teaching of UML Diagrams in Software Engineering EducationProceedings of the 5th European Conference on Software Engineering Education10.1145/3593663.3593672(184-188)Online publication date: 19-Jun-2023
  • (2023)What more can LEGO Teach Agile Methods2023 4th International Informatics and Software Engineering Conference (IISEC)10.1109/IISEC59749.2023.10391011(1-6)Online publication date: 21-Dec-2023
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