  Tabletop exercises are used to train personnel in the efficient mitigation
and resolution of incidents. They are applied in practice to support the
preparedness of organizations and to highlight inefficient processes. Since
tabletop exercises train competencies required in the workplace, they have been
introduced into computing courses at universities as an innovation, especially
within cybersecurity curricula. To help computing educators adopt this
innovative method, we survey academic publications that deal with tabletop
exercises. From 140 papers we identified and examined, we selected 14 papers
for a detailed review. The results show that the existing research deals
predominantly with exercises that follow a linear format and exercises that do
not systematically collect data about trainees' learning. Computing education
researchers can investigate novel approaches to instruction and assessment in
the context of tabletop exercises to maximize the impact of this teaching
method. Due to the relatively low number of published papers, the potential for
future research is immense. Our review provides researchers, tool developers,
and educators with an orientation in the area, a synthesis of trends, and
implications for further work.
