Um método de aprendizagem baseada em desafios : um estudo de caso em ambientes de desenvolvimento de aplicativos

Abstract

The development of mobile applications is a growing market since when the first distribution platforms from large IT companies emerged. The development platforms constantly change with additions of new hardware and software features organized in different frameworks, which motivates the fact of being scalable application development to keep up with the constant plataform updates. Determining the best way to prepare developers for this emerging software industry is a challenge. There is a need for identifying and building a consensus around success practices in mobile application learning and development environments. This thesis has as main objective to propose a method to support application development training through challenge based learning and agile practices. This research methodology was organized into three research phases. In phase one, the best practices for mobile application development in the literature have been identified. From these results, in phase two a preliminary method integrating challenge based learning and agile practices was proposed. Also, this step carried out a field study in order to understand the mobile application development environment, as well as to map advantages and drawbacks, identifying the method feasibility, providing a set of lessons learned. In phase three a case study was conducted in four universities in different regions of Brazil, this study allowed to apply the method and to understand its use in different regions and generated a set of improvement opportunities, best practices and recommendations. The adoption of this method presented results in terms of knowledge gain perception and also resulted on mobile application projects delivered to the market.