Investigating the role of purposeful goals on novices' engagement in a programming game

Proceedings of the 45th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

et al. 2014

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Computer programming is now used broadly across many industries, with a diversity of working adults writing programs and interacting with code as part of their jobs. However, negative attitudes toward programming continue to deter many from studying computer science and pursuing careers in technology. To begin understanding adults' attitudes toward computer programming and how we can improve them, we used an educational video game to give 200 adult participants a concrete programming experience via the web, and then collected their self-reported opinions about programming. We found that adults initially had poor attitudes toward programming, believing that it was difficult, boring, and something they generally could not learn. After the online learning experience, their attitudes improved significantly, regardless of gender, population density, or level of education. These results demonstrate that adult attitudes toward programming, while initially negative, can be quickly changed with a brief, positive exposure to programming.

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Challenging stereotypes and changing attitudes

Charters

Proceedings of the 45th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

et al. 2014

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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%

Principles of a debugging-first puzzle game for computing education

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

Bahmani

Kwan

et al. 2014

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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.

“…Those playing the former version completed double the levels and were more likely to say they wanted to help the character than those playing the latter version of the game. The second study [6] examined how the purposefulness of the levels' goals, manipulated by the names and images of the objects the game character interacted with, affected people's motivation to play the game. Players were randomly assigned to groups using vertebrate animals (e.g., dogs, cats), invertebrates (e.g., insects), or inanimate objects (e.g., blocks), within the context of cleaning up a chemical spill.…”

Section: Thesis Goals Methods and Statusmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

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

2013

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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.