Gauge Object Oriented Programming in Student’s Learning Performance, Normalized Learning Gains and Perceived Motivation with Serious Games

Abstract

Serious Games (SG) provide a comfortable learning environment and are productive for various disciplines ranging from Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) to computer programming. The Object Oriented (OO) paradigm includes objects related to real life, and is considered a natural domain that can be worked with. Nonetheless, mapping those real-life objects with basic Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) concepts becomes a challenge for students to understand. Therefore, this study is concerned with designing and developing an SG prototype to overcome students’ difficulties and misconceptions in learning OOP and achieving positive learning outcomes. An experimental evaluation was carried out to show the difference between the experimental group students’ performance, who interact with the developed game, and students of the control group, who learn via the traditional instructional method. The experimental evaluations’ main finding is that the experimental group’s performance is better than the control group. The experimental group’s Normalized Learning Gain (NLG) is significantly higher than the control group (p< 0.005, paired t-test). The evaluation study results show that the developed prototype’s perceived motivation on the Instructional Materials Motivation Survey (IMMS) 5-point Likert scale resulted in the highest mean score for attention (3.87) followed by relevance (3.66) subcategories. The results of this study show that the developed SG prototype is an effective tool in education, which improves learning outcomes and it has the potential to motivate students to learn OOP.

A Systematic Literature Review of Teaching and Learning on Object-Oriented Programming Course

“…Regarding students, the literature review reveals that these aspects are categorized into problems of Cost, Background and Student Learning Experiences, Learning Motivation, Level of Comprehension, and Problem-Solving Skills (see Table IV). Cost (S1) [4] Background and Student Learning Experiences (S2) [1,14,15,17,18,[20][21][22] Learning Motivation (S3) [11,[23][24][25][26] Level of Comprehension (S4) [27][28][29][30][32][33][34] Problem Solving Skills (S5) [35][36][37] Cost. For most students, learning to program is a very expensive task and can slow down the learning process.…”

“…Several competencies, especially digital skills, are seen as crucial for the development of personal abilities [36]. Students cannot solve complex problems, so they are replaced with basic concepts to build higher cognitive understanding [37]. Material Portion (C3) [28,25,33,61,63] Learning Models or Methods.…”

“…Some of these difficulties include the fact that OOP translates real-world objects into object-oriented code [57], sometimes lecturers do not have enough experience with the OOP concept on how to teach the abstraction of the concept to students [53], and many applications are designed to make objects interact with each other, which is different from the procedural programming style [22]. Of course, the transition from a procedural programming paradigm to an object-oriented paradigm is a challenge in itself [37]. Due to its complexity and abstraction, the OOP concept needs innovative solutions, which can serve as a means to study the concepts [60].…”

“…Sedlacek et al [22] created the FRIMAN project to simplify the process of learning the OOP paradigm in the Java language. Abbasi and Kazi et al [37] developed a Serious Game (SG) prototype called OOsg to study OOP. Abidin and Zawawi [62] Combining OOP with Augmented Reality (AR).…”

Effect of Collaborative Programming on Students Achievement Learning Object-Oriented Programming Course

“…OOP is difficult to learn for students, especially novice students, because both the basic concepts (objects and classes) and fundamental concepts (encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism) are abstract [8][9][10][11], hard to describe [12][13][14] and more than just understanding the definition [15]. Some of these difficulties include the fact that OOP translates real-world objects into object-oriented code [16]; sometimes the lecturers do not have enough experience with the OOP concept on how to teach the abstraction of the concept to students [17]; many applications are designed based on object interactions which is different from the procedural programming style [18]; of course, the transition from a procedural programming paradigm to an object-oriented paradigm is a challenge in itself [19]. Due to complexity and abstraction, the OOP concept needs innovative solutions, which can serve as a means to learn these concepts [20].…”