Article

Improving CRC-card role-play with role-play diagrams

Author:

Jürgen BörstlerAuthors Info & Claims

OOPSLA '05: Companion to the 20th annual ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications

October 2005

Pages 356 - 364

https://doi.org/10.1145/1094855.1094973

Published: 16 October 2005 Publication History

Abstract

CRC-cards are a lightweight approach to collaborative object-oriented modeling. They have been adopted by many educators and trainers to teach early object-oriented design. Reports in the literature are generally positive. So is our own experience. However, over the years, we have noticed many subtle problems and issues that have largely gone unnoticed in the literature.In this paper, we discuss the problems and issues we experienced when teaching CRC-cards to novices. Two major sources of problems can be traced back to the CRC-card role-play. One is the usage of CRC-cards as substitutes for actual objects during the scenario role-play and the other the difficulty to document or trace the scenario role-play ``on the fly". We propose a new type of diagram to support the role-play activities and to overcome these problems. Our experience so far is quite positive. Novices have fewer problems with role-play activities when using these diagrams. Teaching and learning the new type of diagram adds only little overhead to the overall CRC-approach.We also provide general guidelines for CRC-card usage. Although our improvements are aimed at novices, we believe that the proposed diagram is useful even for professional software development.

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Cited By

Hamann MPfeffer JDemuth B(2018)How to improve the understanding of roles in modelingProceedings of the 21st ACM/IEEE International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems: Companion Proceedings10.1145/3270112.3270131(114-121)Online publication date: 14-Oct-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3270112.3270131
Maxim BBrunvand SDecker A(2017)Use of role-play and gamification in a software project course2017 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE.2017.8190501(1-5)Online publication date: Oct-2017
https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2017.8190501
Decker ASimkins D(2016)Leveraging role play to explore software and game development process2016 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE.2016.7757685(1-5)Online publication date: Oct-2016
https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2016.7757685
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cover image ACM Conferences

OOPSLA '05: Companion to the 20th annual ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications

October 2005

406 pages

ISBN:1595931937

DOI:10.1145/1094855

Conference Chair:
Ralph Johnson
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
,
Program Chair:
Richard P. Gabriel
Sun Microsystems Laboratories

Copyright © 2005 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 16 October 2005

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Cited By

Hamann MPfeffer JDemuth B(2018)How to improve the understanding of roles in modelingProceedings of the 21st ACM/IEEE International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems: Companion Proceedings10.1145/3270112.3270131(114-121)Online publication date: 14-Oct-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3270112.3270131
Maxim BBrunvand SDecker A(2017)Use of role-play and gamification in a software project course2017 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE.2017.8190501(1-5)Online publication date: Oct-2017
https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2017.8190501
Decker ASimkins D(2016)Leveraging role play to explore software and game development process2016 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE.2016.7757685(1-5)Online publication date: Oct-2016
https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2016.7757685
Decker ASimkins D(2016)Uncovering difficulties in learning for the intermediate programmer2016 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE.2016.7757446(1-8)Online publication date: Oct-2016
https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2016.7757446
Decker AEgert CPhelps A(2016)Splat! er, shmup? A postmortem on a capstone production experience2016 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE.2016.7757399(1-9)Online publication date: Oct-2016
https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2016.7757399
Lutz RSchäfer SDiehl SCho YShin SKim SHung CHong J(2014)Are smartphones better than CRC cards?Proceedings of the 29th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing10.1145/2554850.2554852(987-994)Online publication date: 24-Mar-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2554850.2554852
Boticki IKatic MMartin S(2013)Exploring the Educational Benefits of Introducing Aspect-Oriented Programming Into a Programming CourseIEEE Transactions on Education10.1109/TE.2012.220911956:2(217-226)Online publication date: 1-May-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TE.2012.2209119
Lutz RSchafer SDiehl S(2013)Teaching object-orientation with smartphones as digital CRC cards2013 26th International Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training (CSEE&T)10.1109/CSEET.2013.6595240(89-98)Online publication date: May-2013
https://doi.org/10.1109/CSEET.2013.6595240
Börstler JKuzniarz LAlphonce CSanders WSmialek MAdams LRagonis N(2012)Teaching software modeling in computing curriculaProceedings of the final reports on Innovation and technology in computer science education 2012 working groups10.1145/2426636.2426640(39-50)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2426636.2426640
Jimenez-Diaz GGonzalez-Calero PGomez-Albarran M(2012)Role-play virtual worlds for teaching object-oriented design: the ViRPlay development experienceSoftware—Practice & Experience10.1002/spe.107142:2(235-253)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1002/spe.1071
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