Abstract

Interactive virtual scenarios and simulations in scenario-based learning are recognised by many teaching and learning communities as effective tools for developing reasoning, and for safe training in workplace competency. The WAVES project takes scenario-based learning ‘out-of-the-box’, to make it more accessible for a wide range of professions. User stories – the common artefacts used in many agile software development techniques – were used in the early stage of the WAVES project to shape future developments of existing software for authoring and playing virtual scenarios. The use of a specific template of a user story together with a gaming activity for sorting of all obtained user stories helped to simplify and accelerate the creation of user requirement specification document.

Keywords

Virtual scenarios; scenario-based learning; user requirements; user stories; software development

Background

The ERASMUS+ funded project entitled Widening Access to Virtual Educational Scenarios (WAVES) combines skill sets of both academic and enterprise partners to make Scenario-Based Learning (SBL) more accessible for a wide range of professions.  SBL techniques are widely recognised as a key tool in the educational toolkit, for safe training in competency and decision-making [1].

There are several technical activities in the WAVES project, aiming at shaping upcoming developments of software – already available for authoring and playing virtual scenarios. As in any other projects involving a software development activity, the first step is to determine needs by composing a User Requirements Specification document (URS).

Creation of a URS document is said to be the single most important element in many guidelines, practices or event project management methodologies. For instance, Good Automated Manufacturing Practice (GAMP), which was widely adopted by the pharmaceutical industry, includes a risk-based approach to computerized systems [3]. This approach can be explained by the V-model of the systems engineering process, which contrasts the specifications produced for a system to the testing performed as part of a verification process, see Figure 1.

The recent agile methodologies (see [3] for agile software development) for managing software development processes often shift the focus from writing about URS to talking about the requirements. Agile software development emphasizes frequent deliveries of working software, close customer collaboration and ability to respond quickly to changes. The particular agile methodologies (e.g. SCRUM or KANBAN) deliver set of development artefacts, among them are user stories – written as simple reminders to a conversation with project stakeholders or customers.

In the next sections, we show our approach to the creation and the use of user stories in the early stage of the WAVES project.

WAVES on-line survey

A 44-item on-line survey was developed by the project partners and distributed via email, social media, and websites in April 2016. In total, 161 participants from 21 different countries responded to the questions. There were participants from all main target groups of the project - learners, educators, and technologists. The survey covered questions on general online learning resources, Scenario-Based Learning and Massive Open Online Courses. Selected results from the survey are summarized in Figure 2. Several key-messages identified in the obtained data are summarized in Table 1.

Table 1. Key-messages for End-User Specifications – identified in the dataset gathered during the on line survey

User stories

User stories were extracted from the dataset coming from need analysis. A crucial attention was paid to the answers to the open questions in the on-line survey and to the answers obtained during focus groups.

The stories were rewritten into business language (not technical) in this specific format:

“As a _____, I ______, so that _______.”

(E.g.: As a learner, I want to join a scenario by entering my credentials which I am using at my home institution, so that I can be authenticated without need to create/remember a new account.)

There were 78 user stories mined from the dataset and classified into 6 different categories, see Table 2.

Table 2. Numbers of user stories in different categories

Agile sorting

During the WAVES project kick-off meeting (June 2016), the group of 15 experts in the field of technology-enhanced learning and medical education was subdivided into three working subgroups. Each subgroup assigned one of three importance/relevance-label to each user story: (i) top priority, (ii) nice to have, (iii) not required. During this activity, the working group decided to concentrate mainly on the SBL-LEARNER and SBL-EDUCATOR categories. See Figure 3 for the pictures taken during the agile sorting activity.

Scoring

In order to recognize the most important user stories, the number of hits was counted for each story from each subgroup and these numbers were then used to compute the importance/relevance score – as a weighted average. Both tables 3 and 4 show the most important user stories in each category. All stories with their hit numbers and the final scores can be found in the resulting deliverable [4].

Table 3. The 11 most important user stories in the SBL-LEARNER category

Table 4. The 13 most important user stories in the SBL-EDUCATOR category

Conclusions

The user requirements specification document is composed with the use of user stories – ordered by score, which represents the importance of the requirement and its relevance to the objectives of the project. There are many user stories touching on pedagogical issues, teaching/learning content and content authoring. These have been rephrased into two concluding end-user requirements:

• As a learner I want scenario based learning to be delivered through realistic means and media with impactful consequences so that it is engaging and useful for real life situations.
• As an educator I want an easy to use and powerful SBL authoring toolkit that can integrate realistic authentic means of interaction for impactful SBL educational episodes.

Although the presented specification is focused mainly on pedagogy aspects, some purely technical requirements are expressed predominantly as well:

• As a learner I want SBL to be free from technical barriers, so that I can focus on learning.
• As an educator I would like scenario based learning to be integrated with other existing systems, so that I can build complex eLearning environment.
• As an educator, I want the SBL platform to be integrated with the institutional LMS, so that resource fragmentation is prevented.
• As an educator, I intend my developed online content to be accessed on all kinds of devices, so that my learners are able to do instant and self-paced learning.

In the following steps of the WAVES project, the user stories with the highest scores will be used: (i) to shape the directions of the developments in the technical work package and tasks; (ii) as a basis for quality control – acceptance tests may be derived from them, as there is the satisfaction component expressed clearly (iii) to acknowledge what non-technical support and guidance will need to be developed to aid the technical developments and knowledge of SBL for scenario creators. The authors of this tutorial believe that the user stories may be useful in other projects and more widely, as they help significantly in simplifying the process of composing the user requirements specification document.

Acknowledgement

This tutorial is a result of activities performed within the WAVES project (562463-EPP-1-2015-1-UK-EPPKA2-KA) – funded by Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union. The authors would like to thank the following list of colleagues for their cooperation in the WAVES working groups: Martin Adler, Panagiotis Antoniou, Chara Balasubramaniam, Pannagiotis Bamidis, Fiona Howat, Inga Hege, Trupti Jivram, Andrzej Kononowicz, Supriya Krishnan, Anneliese Lilienthal, Terry Poulton, Aurora Sese, Dimitris Spachos, Natalia Stathakarou, Stephen Taylor, David Topps & Luke Woodham.

References

1. WAVES – Project Overview [Online]. Available at WWW: http://wavesnetwork.eu/index.php#page-project-overview. [Accessed: 25-Jan-2017].

2. Osborne L, Brummond J, Hart R, Zarean MM, Conger S. Clarus Concept of Operations. Publication No. FHWA-JPO-05-072, Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) 2005.

3. Beck K et al. Manifesto for Agile Software Development. Agile Alliance 2001.

4. WAVES – D1.2 End-User Specification, [Online]. Available at WWW: http://wavesnetwork.eu/res/file/user-specification.pdf. [Accessed: 25-Jan-2017].