DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.01.639

Summary
The article presents a strategy to introduce software engineering principles using game programming. The course design, including the integrated development environment, required modules, examples, and assessment are covered. The authors state that such an active learning approach enhances students’ competencies in designing and developing software systems of various complexity. They also discuss the experience in implementing the course and the things to consider, namely, excessive amount of time needed to prepare the programming examples, lack of teaching material, difficult comparison for evaluation, continuation of the programme curriculum.

Relevance for Complex Systems Knowledge
The course of game programming is described in this article. The course is dedicated to complex system development and developing skills in python programming, computer graphics and software engineering principles. The authors state that students avoid courses which are time consuming and require high programming skills, the curriculum of the course should also include various topics and the assessment. However, the evaluation of the final students’ abilities showed that majority of the students are able to use current techniques, skills and tools necessary for computing practice, and apply design and development principles to create software systems of various complexity.

Point of Strength
The point of strength of this article is that is demonstrates how complex teaching can be used in the field of informatics. The goals of the course are to teach python programming, game development and computer graphics and students achieve these goals by implementing a 2D game in python.