=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=None
|storemode=property
|title=Using i* for Transparent Pedagogy
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-978/paper_5.pdf
|volume=Vol-978
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/istar/MonsalveL13
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==Using i* for Transparent Pedagogy==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-978/paper_5.pdf
Proceedings of the 6th International i* Workshop (iStar 2013), CEUR Vol-978
Using i* for Transparent Pedagogy
Elizabeth Suescún Monsalve and Julio Cesar Sampaio do Prado Leite,
Departamento de Informática, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro,
Rua Marquês de São Vicente 225, Ed. Padre Leonel Franca 13o. andar,
Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
emonsalve@inf.puc-rio.br, http://www-di.inf.puc-rio.br/~julio/
Abstract. Pedagogy, “the principles and methods of instruction” (Word-
net), implies a relationship among actors playing the roles of teacher and
student and has a direct impact on the students' learning performance. In
the past, the teacher was a transmitter of knowledge and the student a pas-
sive receiver. Nowadays, students are encouraged to challenge, deepen
and create their own knowledge and teachers are supposed to lead this
process. For that reason, transparency emerges as an important concern
that aims to enhance this relationship by improving student awareness
about the process and the contents of learning. The purpose of this re-
search is to address the potential of i* within pedagogy transparency. We
discuss the role of i* models as providing transparency for a game-based
learning (GBL) strategy.
Keywords. iStar, Transparency, Pedagogy
1 Introduction
According to [1] pedagogy is “study of teaching methods, including the aims of edu-
cation and the ways in which such goals can be achieved.”, or according to [2] “Ped-
agogy is more than the accumulation of techniques and strategies: arranging a class-
room, formulating questions, developing explanations, creating a curriculum. It is
informed by a view of mind, of learning and learners, of the kind of knowledge that is
valued and above all by the educational outcomes that are desired.” As such, it can
also be seen as a relationship between actors who have interpersonal contacts aiming
the transfer of knowledge. In a broad sense, this relationship has a direct impact on a
students' academic performance. For that reason, transparency is important [10], as to
enhance students’ awareness and their commitment towards learning [3].
The purpose of this article is to explore the question: what is the potential of i* as
an enabler of pedagogy transparency? As such, we discuss the role of i*[5] models as
providing transparency for a game-based learning (GBL) strategy, focusing on a
specific setting: Software Engineering Education by means of a GBL strategy. In
particular, we narrow down the general question by a first investigation of a specific
situation: SimulES-W [4] as the implementation of the game.
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Proceedings of the 6th International i* Workshop (iStar 2013), CEUR Vol-978
Proposals for GBL in Software Engineering are being reported by different re-
searchers [9]. Although there are positive evaluations for GBL [15], there is still lack
of evaluations on the effectiveness of these strategies in SE. Our first experimental
results [14], based on the application of tests to different groups, those which played
and those who did not, shows that SimulES-W has a positive pedagogic effect. On
the other hand, we also have experience in opening the game for students as an open
source project. This gave us an insight that the software that implements the game
provides an extra leverage if students can understand it. Since we have been working
on software transparency [13], we decided to explore the transparency of SimulES-W
as way of implementing pedagogy transparency, enabling students to better under-
stand the inner workings of the game.
SimulES-W is a digital game used to teach software engineering [4], this game al-
lows the players to play in a collaborative way. During the development process of
SimulES-W the approach used was to base the requirements on the representation of
intentionality between players. The resulting models were used to generate the im-
plementation and to show how the game works not only from a technical approach
but also from the point of view of the actor’s intentionality. Using i* models we aim
to show students how the game works from a conceptual modeling standpoint.
2 Objectives of the research
The aim of our research is to explore pedagogy transparency in the context of GBL,
using the SimulES-W game. Pedagogy transparency [10] is a new concept not yet
fully developed. The general idea is that, if students are told of how they are being
taught, this may work in their benefit as to gain more knowledge as they become
more aware of the teaching process, and as such have a more effective learning. Giv-
en that we have explored the potential of i* towards more transparent models [11], by
means of our transparency conceptual model (accessibility, usability, informativeness,
understandability and auditability) [13], we conjecture that i* models maybe a way of
providing pedagogy transparency. As such, i* models will be used as way to provid-
ing transparency for a game-based learning (GBL) strategy, in particular of its own
internal workings. That is, not only the game is used to enhance learning, but the
game itself will be disclosed to the students (users) to inform them of how it achieves
its goals.
Through SimulES-W, we will explore how i* models could provide support to the
non-functional requirement of transparency [11, 13] as to be a means to disclose the
inner workings of the game. We used a strategy that derives i*models using the Inten-
tional Requirements Engineering method (Eri*c) [7]. The strategy uses, as a starting
point, a lexicon [6] describing the vocabulary of the application. Intentional models
are later on mapped to a MVC based architecture and to the source code.
Although the general question is how i* could enhance pedagogy transparency, we
will study the question within a particular case of a multi-player, collaborative game.
Our evaluation will be based on testing students using two different groups: a) stu-
dents with exposure to GBL, and b) students with exposure to GBL and the GBL i*
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Proceedings of the 6th International i* Workshop (iStar 2013), CEUR Vol-978
models. Note that our proposed protocol will evaluate the use of i* as an enhancer of
pedagogy, by providing some level of transparency. We will not compare i* models
with other types of models for the same task. Central to our evaluation will be the
question of the transparent rationale as an incentive to more effective learning, by
leveraging student’s awareness.
3 Scientific contributions
3.1 SimulES-W
SimulES-W is an evolution of the Problems and Programmers (PnP) game [12]; it
aims at teaching software engineering process in a collaborative way, where a player
covers the role of software project manager and this player has to deal with: budget
problems, software engineers employment, and building of artifacts, all of that within
the requirements of the project. Moreover, the player has to submit problems to other
players, adversaries, to damage their game. SimulES-W has different rounds where
players execute their moves such as: Start, Concept and Manage problems, Actions
(Build, Inspect or Correct artifacts and integrate artifacts into a module), and Submit
product.
3.2 The Modeling Process
SimulES-W [4] was developed using ERi*c [7], a method which uses i* as the main
modeling language. ERi*c has 6 parts, interconnected by a bus (requirements base-
line) through which they interact. The parts are: goal and actor elicitation, SDsitua-
tions identification, goal modeling for each actor, rationale modeling for each actor,
Sdsituations specification, and analysis of SD and SR models. Strategic Dependency
Situations (Sdsituations) identifies goals arrangements interconnected in order to im-
plement how goals should be composed to set context dependency situations. Figure 1
portrays the SDsituation for the SimulES-W, which shows each round of the game.
The rounds are named: Play round to start, Play round to actions, Build artifacts, In-
spect artifacts, Play round to concepts, Managing problems, Submit product and Inte-
grate artifacts in a module. Also, Figure 1 illustrates the time ordering required be-
tween rounds. Each round has its corresponding SD and SR Diagrams; Figure 3 illus-
trates one of them. Figure 2 describes the different actors, agents, roles and positions
involved in the game, as seen from the software, informing the different types of ac-
tors and their instantiations.
3.3 Mapping Heuristics
SimulES-W is based on a MVC (Model-View-Controller) pattern to separate the
business logic, interface, and control. Similar to the work presented in [8], we have
devised a way of mapping i* models to an MVC architectural level description, which
is described in [4]. This architecture is then reflected in the game´s code.
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Proceedings of the 6th International i* Workshop (iStar 2013), CEUR Vol-978
T1 Play round
to start
[Choose action]
Integrate
Play round to
T2 actions artifacts in a
module
[Choose action]
Build Inspect Correct
artifacts artifacts artifacts N
Play round
to concepts
T3 Manage
Y
[Do you have problem problems
cards?]
N
[Can you submit product? ]
Y
T4
Submit
product
Figure 1. SDSituations Diagram [9].
Figure 2. The SA Model for SimulES-W [9].
3.4 i* models as providing transparency for a game-based learning (GBL) strategy
If, in the process of helping learning, GBL becomes more transparent, we infer that
the Pedagogy being used, will be more transparent; making the students more aware
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Proceedings of the 6th International i* Workshop (iStar 2013), CEUR Vol-978
about their learning process. As we can see from Figure 2, the reader of the model
will be informed of the position “adversary” as being occupied by the agent “player”,
and that this position covers the role of “project auditor”, and in Figure 3 the reader
will be informed that the goal “project be accepted” depends on the position “adver-
sary”. In our transparency conceptual model [13], accessibility, is one of the qualities
“helping” transparency. Providing access to the information (disclosure), via models,
we are contributing to transparency, but, of course, the presence of other qualities will
enhance transparency even more. The models produced are used as a way of showing
how the game works, allowing the interested student to know how a GBL strategy is
implemented. As such, the student will have access to how the pedagogy (GBL) is
working. Section 2 described a general approach towards evaluation, based on tests.
However, to better understand the results we have to consider levels of transparency
(given that the concept is multi-faceted). As such, we will need a survey instrumented
with questions to elicit the perceived level of transparency given our model [13], but
also taking in consideration pedagogy [2, 3, 10].
4 Conclusions
We understand that transparent pedagogy involves characteristics as already mapped
in [13], but we need to explore it further in the context of GBL. As we explore the
frontier of transparent pedagogy we plan to continue to use i* models as base for the
disclosure of information about the game and also regarding the context in which the
learning takes places. Of course our models will evolve along the preparation for the
experimental study, as we learn more about transparent pedagogy.
Figure 3. SDsituation: Play round to start.
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Proceedings of the 6th International i* Workshop (iStar 2013), CEUR Vol-978
5 Ongoing and future work
We are starting to understand transparent pedagogy in the context of GBL evaluation
for software engineering. We will use a survey approach, which should blend trans-
parency with more knowledge of pedagogy transparency. This work will stand upon
early work on the game evaluation [9, 11], which uses both qualitative and quantita-
tive questionnaires, in order to build an evaluation mechanism to understand the role
of conceptual models in supporting a transparent pedagogy. As our results become
available we will be in a better position as to infer the implications of the results to-
wards the question of how intentional models may help pedagogy transparency.
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