Using XNA to Teach Software Architecture

This paper describes a case study of how a game project using the XNA Game Studio was implemented in a software architecture course. In previous years, a main part of the software architecture course was a software development project where the students were to design the software architecture and implement a robot controller in Java. The robot controller was chosen for the project, as there exist several papers and descriptions on reference architectures to deal with mobile robots. This paper describes the changes we had to make to introduce an XNA game development project in the software architecture course, and our experiences from running a software architecture project focusing on game development and XNA. The experience described in this paper is based on feedback from the course staff, the project reports of the students, and a formal mandatory course evaluation. The evaluation shows that although there were some challenges related to using XNA in the software architecture course, the effect was mainly positive. Classification: D.2.11 [Software Architectures], K.3.2 [Computer and Information Science Education], K.8 [Personal Computing] Games