Abstract
This paper describes a case study of how a game project using the XNA Game Studio from Microsoft was implemented in a software architecture course. In this project, university students have to construct and design a type of software architecture, evaluate the architecture, implement an application based on the architecture, and test this implementation. In previous years, the domain of the software architecture project has been a robot controller for navigating a maze.Robot controllerwas chosen as the domain for the project, as there exist several papers and descriptions on reference architectures for managing mobile robots. This paper describes the changes we had to make to introduce an XNA game development project to the software architecture course, and our experiences from running a software architecture project focusing on game development and XNA. The experiences described in this paper are based on feedback from the course staff, the project reports of the students, and a mandatory course evaluation. The evaluation shows among other things that the majority of the students preferred the game project to the robot project, that XNA was considered to be suitable platform for a software architecture project, that the students found it useful to learn XNA and C#, and that some students were carried away when developing the game in the software architecture project.
Highlights
Games have been used in education for many years mainly focusing on teaching children in an interesting and motivating way
This paper describes the changes we had to make to introduce an XNA game development project to the software architecture course, and our experiences from running a software architecture project focusing on game development and XNA
We have found the XNA was a perfect fit for our game project as it provides a high-level API, the framework is mature and well supported, and the students are motivated by the fact that XNA makes it easy to develop for XBOX 360
Summary
Games have been used in education for many years mainly focusing on teaching children in an interesting and motivating way. By introducing games in higher education lecturers can access teaching aids that promote active students, provide alternative teaching methods to improve variation, enable social learning through multiplayer learning games, and motivate students to work harder on projects and exercises. Many students dream of making their own games, and game development projects allow the students to use their creativity in contrast to, for example developing a more traditional web-based application. Game technologies and game user interfaces are being more commonly used in serious applications [12,13,14], and the market for serious games is growing This makes it important for students to learn how to develop games even the students do not target to work in the game industry
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