Toward an Innovative Educational Method to Train Students to Agile Approaches in Higher Education: The A.L.P.E.S.

Jannik Laval,Abir B Karami,Guillaume Lozenguez,Rémy Pinot,Alexis Lebis,Anthony Fleury,Mathieu Vermeulen

doi:10.3390/educsci11060267

Abstract

Introduced in 2013, the A.L.P.E.S. approach (AgiLe aPproaches in higher Education Studies) aims to apply agile practices to teaching. Agile approaches are project management practices for IT development. More pragmatic than traditional methods, they allow to be closer to the applicant and to involve him/her as much as possible. They offer a great reactivity and a good adaptation to best meet the needs. They are used today in a large part of IT companies. Largely inspired by agile approaches, the A.L.P.E.S. approach allows the teaching of project management in a transverse way to a main course. It makes teaching more flexible and more adapted to the students. In this article, we describe the approach. We describe the tools, the process of creating a course, and the process of running a course.

Highlights

In 2001, a group of leading IT developers designed and wrote the agile manifesto [1]. This manifesto aimed to propose a paradigm for software development around four founding principles as an alternative to widely used classical IT project management methods (Such as the v-Model for Software Development [2])
Agile approaches and methods based on this manifesto are widespread in the world of IT development and in other sectors of the enterprise
As project-based pedagogy is widely used in higher education and has many intrinsic qualities, its adoption for the design of such a modality seems interesting

Summary

Introduction

In 2001, a group of leading IT developers designed and wrote the agile manifesto [1]. This manifesto aimed to propose a paradigm for software development around four founding principles as an alternative to widely used classical IT project management methods (Such as the v-Model for Software Development [2]). Agile approaches and methods (with, as an example, the well-known SCRUM [3]) based on this manifesto are widespread in the world of IT development and in other sectors of the enterprise. As project-based pedagogy is widely used in higher education and has many intrinsic qualities, its adoption for the design of such a modality seems interesting. (ii) could agile approaches be taught through project-based pedagogy? The question of a project-based pedagogy integrating the concepts of agile approaches is acutely raised: (i) how could agile approaches be integrated into project-based learning? (ii) could agile approaches be taught through project-based pedagogy?

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Conclusion