A board game to improve freshmen on computer networks: Beyond layers abstraction

Abstract

The freshman student’s perspective on the activities performed in a data center by the network analyst is complex and intricate. These activities include the configuration of equipment and the connection between network devices. There are several issues with these activities that demand technical knowledge. Questions such as: ”what does this equipment do?”; ”How is it connected to another?”; ”How is it configured?” can be complicated for beginner students. Moreover, these technical questions are also associated with scalability, availability, security, portability, accounting, and costs. These resources require technical knowledge and also how to aggregate them into a network solution. We applied an abstraction set to mitigate these issues for first-year students and created the Network Analyst Board Game. This board game introduces students to the computer network field geared toward Data Center activities. The objective of this paper is to report this game. The students obtained essential theoretical and practical knowledge regarding computer networks after playing. A quasi-experiment was conducted with a set of students from the computing courses. After these experiments, more interactivity was noted among the students, resulting from the game mechanics applied. Therefore, in addition to increasing their interest in the area, the students elaborated more complex questions. The professors found that, after playing, the students presented more pertinent doubts during classes.

Full text

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-022-11557-9
A board game to improve freshmen on computer
networks: Beyond layers abstraction
J´
ulio Cesar Ramos1·Alexandre L’Erario2·Marcio Mendonc¸a3·
Jos´
e Augusto Fabri2·Rodrigo Henrique Cunha Pal´
acios2
©The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2023
Abstract
The freshman student’s perspective on the activities performed in a data center by the
network analyst is complex and intricate. These activities include the configuration of
equipment and the connection between network devices. There are several issues with
these activities that demand technical knowledge. Questions such as: ”what does this
equipment do?”; ”How is it connected to another?”; ”How is it configured?” can be
complicated for beginner students. Moreover, these technical questions are also asso-
ciated with scalability, availability, security, portability, accounting, and costs. These
resources require technical knowledge and also how to aggregate them into a network
solution. We applied an abstraction set to mitigate these issues for first-year students
and created the Network Analyst Board Game. This board game introduces students
to the computer network field geared toward Data Center activities. The objective
of this paper is to report this game. The students obtained essential theoretical and
practical knowledge regarding computer networks after playing. A quasi-experiment
was conducted with a set of students from the computing courses. After these exper-
iments, more interactivity was noted among the students, resulting from the game
mechanics applied. Therefore, in addition to increasing their interest in the area, the
students elaborated more complex questions. The professors found that, after playing,
the students presented more pertinent doubts during classes.
Keywords Abstraction ·Playful teaching ·Board game ·Computer Networks
1 Introduction
Data centers (DC) provide an indispensable and crucial structure for the operation of
Internet services and applications, according to Xia et al. (2017). The Network and
Alexandre L’Erario
alerario@utfpr.edu.br
Extended author information available on the last page of the article.
Educational and Information Technologies (2023) 28:11167–11191
Received: 24 November2021 / Accepted: 22 December 2022/ Published online:14 February 2023
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.