An Experimental Evaluation of a Teaching Approach for Statistical Process Control in Computer Courses

Julio Furtado,Sandro Ronaldo Bezerra Oliveira,Rafael Oliveira Chaves,Adeildo Telles,Adolfo Colares

doi:10.4018/ijicte.2021010110

Abstract

In organizations that are seeking a high degree of maturity, it is necessary to achieve a statistical control of software processes and to know their behavior and operational performance. The approach adopted for the research involves reading articles and experience performance reports, practical cases, discussion, the use of games and simulators, practical projects, and reflection by students on the knowledge learned and activities carried out. The evaluation was conducted with undergraduates enrolled in a Computer Science Bachelor's degree programme, who were divided into a control group and an experimental group. At the end, the two groups carried out a practical project to evaluate the learning effectiveness reached by the students. The results of the study suggest that there was a difference in the effectiveness of the learning resulting from the teaching approach and traditional instruction. The authors observed a mean gain of 30.06% in the experimental group, which is evidence of this rise in the learning effectiveness.

Highlights

A Statistical Process Control (SPC) must be stable and repeatable and includes a set of techniques for achieving this goal
Reflection: The final stage involves students submitting the results obtained in the practical project and reflecting on their experience, by answering four questions based on the Scrum Sprint Retrospective ceremonies (What methods and techniques were applied when carrying out the project? What were the main difficulties experienced by the team? What methods and techniques were not applied by the team but could have helped? What changes should the team make when they re-run the project?)
The results obtained from testing the H01 hypothesis, “There will be no difference in the averages of the pre and post-test scores obtained by the Experimental group at the application level”, suggests that the planned approach for the teaching of SPC has a positive effect on learning effectiveness at the cognitive application level

Summary

Introduction

A Statistical Process Control (SPC) must be stable and repeatable and includes a set of techniques for achieving this goal For some time, it has been employed for continuous process improvement in industry in general, but with regard to software organizations, its use can be regarded as relatively recent (Alhassan and Jawawi, 2014). It should be noted that our objective is not to prepare an undergraduate program in Computing, but rather, to improve the teaching of SPC as a training scheme that can be administered at any level of education or in any work environment, both in the academic world and industry This methodology is composed by a complete syllabus and a set of strategies for teaching this syllabus. 1.4 Decision-making process 1.5 Critical processes for the business

Results

Discussion

Conclusion