Teaching Scrum to Software Engineering Students with Virtual Reality Support

Abstract

Scrum has received significant academic attention because of its widespread application in software development industries. Teaching agile software development can be illustrated by teaching with lecture-based classes. However, involving students in a real software environment is a trendy alternative which fosters their engagement. Software engineering graduates are not appropriately prepared for applying their skills in a real software project. Thus, we focus on teaching and integrating teamwork-oriented skills in a real software development environment based on Scrum. In this work, we present Virtual Scrum (VS), a virtual reality environment that assists students with the running of a software project following the Scrum framework. VS supports artifacts needed for carrying out Scrum meetings and media-based tools to achieve permanent communication among Scrum members. A survey of students, who used the tool in a Software Engineering (SE) course, showed that VS is helpful to exercise Scrum practices.