An increasing number of countries have recently included programming education in their curricula. Similarly, utilizing programming concepts in gameplay has become popular in the videogame industry. Although many games have been developed for learning to program, their variety and their correspondence to national curricula remain an uncharted territory. Consequently, this paper has three objectives. Firstly, an investigation on the guidelines on programming education in K‐12 in seven countries was performed by collecting curricula and other relevant data official from governmental and non‐profit educational websites. Secondly, a review of existing acquirable games that utilize programming topics in their gameplay was conducted by searching popular game stores. Lastly, we compared the curricula and made suggestions as to which age group the identified games would be suitable. The results of this study can be useful to educators and curriculum designers who wish to gamify programming education.
Achievement badges are increasingly used to enhance educational systems and they have been shown to affect student behavior in different ways. However, details on best practices and effective concepts to implement badges from a non-technical point of view are scarce. We implemented badges to our learning management system, used them on a large course and collected feedback from students. Based on our experiences, we present recommendations to other educators that plan on using badges.
During the past two decades, event-driven programming (EDP) has emerged as a central and almost ubiquitous concept in modern software development: Graphical user interfaces are self-evident in most mobile and web-based applications, as well as in many embedded systems, and they are most often based on reacting to events. To facilitate both teaching practice and research in programming education, this mapping review seeks to give an overview of the related knowledge that is already available in conference papers and journal articles. Starting from early works of the 1990s, we identified 105 papers that address teaching practices, present learning resources, software tools or libraries to support learning, and empirical studies related to EDP. We summarize the publications, their main content, and findings. While most studies focus on bachelor’s level education in universities, there has been substantial work in K-12 level, as well. Few courses address EDP as their main content—rather it is most often integrated with CS1, CS2, or computer graphics courses. The most common programming languages and environments addressed are Java, App Inventor, and Scratch. Moreover, very little of deliberate experimental scientific research has been carried out to explicitly address teaching and learning EDP. Consequently, while so-called experience reports, tool papers, and anecdotal evidence have been published, this theme offers a wide arena for empirical research in the future. At the end of the article, we suggest a number of directions for future research.
Modern online learning management systems (LMSs) support a variety of online learning activities, such as animations, exercises, and other interactive learning materials. However, there are many technical challenges in using the same activities in multiple LMSs because content is typically tightly coupled with one protocol to communicate with the LMS and different LMSs use different protocols for launching activities and receiving grades. This leads to low reusability of learning activities and similar content being developed in multiple places. To overcome these issues, we present Acos, a smart learning content server, which emphasizes the reusability of online learning activities by decoupling the content and existing interoperability protocols. It allows integrating the same learning activities into multiple LMSs using different protocols by providing a uniform interface for learning activities. Adapting this architecture allows instructors to choose activities based on pedagogical goals instead of letting technical restrictions of LMSs dictate the content selection process.T. Sirkiä, and L. Haaranen Figure 2. Different types of online learning activities with varying degrees of interaction from the domain of CS. In a), the learner can write any code and interactively see the results. In b), the learner input is more limited, and the learner can only arrange the given code blocks. In c), the input is most limited, and the learner can only control the visualization. [Colour figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com] T. Sirkiä, and L. Haaranen 3.6.2. Submitting Results. After the learner has solved the exercise, the grade can be submitted back to the LMS. A similar process can be used to send any kind of data back to the LMS. We describe here how this process works. See Figure 5 to follow the description.Step 1 The activity in the browser sends an event by calling a JavaScript function. This event can be a logging or grading event, for example. When the activity was loaded, the protocol added a client-side JavaScript-library that has a protocol-independent interface for a function that the activity can call. The only requirement for the activity is the ability to call this function if two-way communication is needed.After the visualization has finished, Jsvee visualization calls the client-side sendEvent function to submit a grading event to Acos. Jsvee does not know that LTI protocol is used to launch the exercise, it only knows that the sendEvent function is available.Step 2 The client-side JavaScript protocol library in the browser receives the event. Before the event is sent to Acos, the client-side protocol library can add any needed session or protocolspecific data to it. When the client-side processing is ready, the event is sent as a normal HTTP POST request to Acos using AJAX.The client-side support for the LTI protocol handles the function call and receives the event. A browser searches for the learner id and submission URL which are required by the LTI protocol. These are found in hidden HTML fie...
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.