In-game assessments increase novice programmers' engagement and level completion speed

Lee, Michael J.; Ko, Amy J.; Kwan, Irwin

doi:10.1145/2493394.2493410

Cited by 93 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…Descriptions of earlier versions of Gidget have been reported elsewhere [17,18,19], so here we focus only on the details needed for this paper.…”

Section: The Gidget Prototypementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The presentation order of the concepts was designed iteratively based on curricula found in CS1 textbooks, pilot testing with novices, and the authors' cumulative experience teaching CS1 courses, following recent advice in educational game design [1]. Prior work [19] validated the curriculum as engaging to online adult participants (P2-game) that positively affected their attitudes towards programming, regardless of gender or level of education [9]. The units cover 1) game-specific constructs, 2) lists, 3) variables, 4) functions and objects, 5) Booleans and conditionals, 6) while and for each loops, with the final set 7) reviewing all of the concepts.…”

Section: The Gidget Prototypementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The units cover 1) game-specific constructs, 2) lists, 3) variables, 4) functions and objects, 5) Booleans and conditionals, 6) while and for each loops, with the final set 7) reviewing all of the concepts. Each unit ends with two assessment levels testing concepts covered in that unit [19].…”

Section: The Gidget Prototypementioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Principles of a debugging-first puzzle game for computing education

Lee

Bahmani

Kwan

et al. 2014

2014 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC)

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Figure 1. Gidget's level design mode (the Gidget character is circled). In this mode, learners design their own levels for others to solve. Players write code (left) that can include graphics (right), and see animated results (middle), and graphics for the level are on the right. Corvallis, Oregon, USA Abstract-Although there are many systems designed to engage people in programming, few explicitly teach the subject, expecting learners to acquire the necessary skills on their own as they create programs from scratch. We present a principled approach to teach programming using a debugging game called Gidget, which was created using a unique set of seven design principles. A total of 44 teens played it via a lab study and two summer camps. Principle by principle, the results revealed strengths, problems, and open questions for the seven principles. Taken together, the results were very encouraging: learners were able to program with conditionals, loops, and other programming concepts after using the game for just 5 hours.

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“…Descriptions of earlier versions of Gidget have been reported elsewhere [17,18,19], so here we focus only on the details needed for this paper.…”

Section: The Gidget Prototypementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Gidget Prototypementioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Principles of a debugging-first puzzle game for computing education

Lee

Bahmani

Kwan

et al. 2014

2014 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC)

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“…Players interacting with vertebrates completed more levels than those in the other groups, with a significant difference between the vertebrate and inanimate object groups. Finally, the most recent study [7] examined how adding assessments to a game affected people's performance and engagement with the game. We found that those who were given assessment levels (i.e., exams) not only completed significantly more levels than those who were not given assessment levels, but also completed the same set of levels faster than their counterparts.…”

Section: Thesis Goals Methods and Statusmentioning

confidence: 99%

How can a social debugging game effectively teach computer programming concepts?

Lee

2013

Proceedings of the Ninth Annual International ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research

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The dramatically changing availability and sharing of information online has created new opportunities for informal, discretionary learning. This, along with the rise in online gaming across all ages and genders, gives rise to questions about how these resources can be used effectively for teaching. In my work, I examine the efficacy of an online debugging game designed to teach computer programming. More specifically, in addition to developing the game and its learning objectives, I investigate how the inclusion of new features and the manipulation of specific elements within the game affects people's motivation and learning of computer programming and debugging concepts.

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“…As highlighted by Morrison and DiSalvo (2014) who relate the gamification of the Khan Academy, one critical motivational element to have is to place the user at the centre by adding elements of pure play, to make the gaming more "playful". Examples of such approaches include CodeSpells (Esper et al, 2013) and Gidget (Lee et al, 2013). Ibáñez et al (2014) made an experiment to explore the impact of gamification techniques on the engagement and learning about the C programming language.…”

Section: • Live Fights/contests Between Players or Against Bots •mentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning Programming through Games and Contests: Overview, Characterisation and Discussion

Combéfis¹,

Beresnevičius²,

Dagienė³

2016

IOI

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Abstract. Learning of programming and, more generally, of computer science concepts is now reaching the public at large. It is not only reserved for people who studied informatics (computer science) or programming anymore. Teaching programming to schoolchildren presents many challenges: the big diversity in ability and aptitude levels; the big amount of different tools; the time-consuming nature of programming; and of course the difficulty to motivate schoolchildren to keep them busy with hard work. There are various platforms that offer to learn coding and programming, in particular game-based platforms, which are more and more popular. These latter exploits of the gamification process focused on increase in motivation and engagement of the learners. This paper reviews the main kinds of online platforms to learn programming and more general computer science concepts, and illustrates the review with concrete platforms examples.

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In-game assessments increase novice programmers' engagement and level completion speed

Cited by 93 publications

References 20 publications

Principles of a debugging-first puzzle game for computing education

Principles of a debugging-first puzzle game for computing education

How can a social debugging game effectively teach computer programming concepts?

Learning Programming through Games and Contests: Overview, Characterisation and Discussion

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