Improving Software Design Teaching, a Comparative Study

With the constant development of software technologies, it has become increasingly difficult for universities to design curricula that provide students with technical skills that stay relevant by the time they join the workforce; this is particularly true for design. This paper proposes an approach for training students in design software. We aim to understand whether alternative methods for teaching Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign to undergraduate students could effectively replace traditional approaches. We conducted a comparative study with first-semester students: two groups underwent training following traditional methods (lectures followed by in-class exercises), whereas two groups learned using the eduScrum methodology. For the latter approach, students were given 15 assignments to be developed during the semester, with complete freedom on where and how to research the necessary knowledge to achieve the required results. During this process, the instructor acted as a facilitator rather than an instructor, as the Scrum methodology advocates. As we foresaw, some of the tools studied during the semester were surpassed by software updates Adobe introduced, thus adding to our initial argument for developing the methodology in the first place. While we firmly believe that the eduScrum methodology can become a successful approach for teaching design software, further studies are necessary to investigate whether a hybrid methodology might be a better solution to help students transition to a more independent way of learning.