Various Shades of Teaching Agile

Abstract

In parallel with the increasing demands for Agile in industry and academia, many lecturers have started teaching Agile Software Development in various programs. Teaching Agile at universities has both constraints, challenges and opportunities faced by both students and lecturers. Agile courses have been taught at universities by using different approaches that can mainly be divided into two categories: Teaching Agile in an agile way and teaching Agile in a conventional way. As the name calls for it, Agile should be taught in an agile way which is a challenging and still developing subject. Despite significance of Agile and Agile teaching, there is a lack of theoretical and comprehensive studies on Agile teaching and learning in an agile way. The existing literature seems to be more focused on practical and limited contexts as case studies. In this study, we recommend and present various and agile ways to teach Agile by providing decision-tree-like paths with their reasonings for a course design. We aim to enlighten educators who are interested in teaching Agile within a higher education course while designing their courses.