Innovation and Active Learning for Training Mobile App Developers

The mobile market is growing every year, creating a demand for mission-critical and innovative enterprises, and personal applications. This demand implies the need for skills training necessary for students to enter the professional development market. The Innovation, Development and Teaching in Complex Software Environments approach (IDEAS) was developed for the training of mobile developers to meet this need, through an innovative process for student selection, training through the active methodology Challenge Based Learning, software production, and startups creation. The approach was created through action-research applied during two cycles of a real project in a university environment, where 398 students applied for the first cycle, of which 110 were selected, and 900 applied for the second cycle, of which 100 were selected. We undertook evaluations with students and teachers through periodic reflections, questionnaires, and interviews at the end of each cycle. Some of the positive results included the prominence of 125 professional-looking apps that were finalized and published, report of dropout reduction and disapproval in the programming courses and experience in entrepreneurship and pre-acceleration startup program.