Gamification of conceptual modeling education: an analysis of productivity and students’ perception

UML Modeling is a fundamental skill for software developers and analysts, in the phase of requirements engineering. However, Class Diagrams are often not used by developers because of their complexity and lack of awareness and training in using them. Software Engineering courses should therefore make sure that the UML Modeling concepts are properly taught and understood by students. In this paper, we describe a tool, named UMLegend, that applies Gamification to Software Modeling education. The purpose of the tool is to increase the engagement and the competence of students in UML modelling through the use of the most common Gamification mechanics: avatar creations, questlines, leaderboards, scoring systems, achievements, and live feedback. To that extent, we performed an empirical experiment with 280 participants recruited at a Master’s Information System course, to investigate the effects of the incorporation of Gamification on productivity and on the resulting quality when performing UML Modeling tasks. Our results show that both the size of the produced diagrams (+8%) and their correctness (+11%) increase when Gamification mechanics are applied. Gamification is also perceived as a useful and positive experience by the majority of the participants in our experiment, and therefore it can be considered a valuable asset to embed into teaching environments for software modelling.