Analyzing students’ experience in programming with computational thinking through competitive, physical, and tactile games: the quadrilateral method approach

Abstract

The lack of computational thinking (CT) skills can be one of the reasons why students find themselves having difficulties in writing a good program. Therefore, understanding how CT skills can be developed is essential. This research explores how CT skills can be developed for programming through competitive, physical, and tactile games. The CT elements in this research focus on four major programming concepts, and they are, decomposition, pattern recognition, abstraction and algorithmic. We have conducted game activities through several examples that include sorting, swapping and graph algorithms and analyze how the game affects the student experience (SX) in understanding the CT concept in those examples. We have applied the quadrilateral method approach on the data collection and analysis. The data was obtained through observation, interview/survey based on six SX criteria; attention, engagement, awareness, satisfaction, confidence and performance, and comparative performances in relation to the game activities conducted. The results of the quadrilation of the data collected show positive impact on the SX, therefore, highlighting the effectiveness of the competitive, physical and tactile game approach proposed in this research towards programming and CT skills development.