Assessing learning technologies for software design using CRC cards

Abstract

Software engineering practice supports the development of learning technologies, but we do not, perhaps, utilise these learning technologies as much as we could when teaching the practices of software engineering. One useful technique for both learning about and designing object oriented systems is the CRC (Class, Responsibility, Collaboration) card exercise. In this paper we describe an experiment based on a CRC card exercise to compare a learning task related to software design executed in three environments; classroom based, e-learning and mobile learning. Our results indicate that although the software engineering aspect of the task may be better executed in traditional classroom environment, some aspects of the learning process may be enhanced by a mobile solution.