Game programming for improving learning experience

Abstract

In Computer Science Education there is a tendency to implement active learning paradigms where students are the focus of the educational process. An instantiation of these learning methods are gaming environments. We present ProGames, a system for learning programming skills through a leveled set of visuallyattractive and interactive programming games in Greenfoot, categorized by student's likes offering them solutions to sets of problems that they really enjoy or like most. The system has been evaluated during the academic course 2012-13 in three Computer Science Degrees and our results indicate that using ProGames had a most positive influence in the students learning. Moreover, the subjective opinion of students reflects that they really enjoyed working with the system and increased the engagement with the course.

Serious games for motivating into programming

“…We found significant differences in the grade that assesses knowledge before and after using ProGames on the experimental group, but not on the control group. We estimate the magnitude of this improvement as outstanding, counting a huge effect as a consequence of its use in the sample studied, with a very high improvement [8].…”

From Android games to coding in C—An approach to motivate novice engineering students to learn programming: A case study

“…Scratch is a popular environment on a K12 level. In university, for example, teaching programming with ProGames has shown positive post-test results and an increase in novice programming students' motivation, comparing experimental, and control groups [10]. Using game programming in micro worlds, like Alice, to teach CS0 courses [23] has also helped to increase students' motivation.…”

Game-Based Learning: Enhancing Student Experience, Knowledge Gain, and Usability in Higher Education Programming Courses

“…In summary, existing studies have shown that educational games are an effective mechanism to increase students' motivation [17], [19] and engagement [8], improve student learning performance [20] and achieve better user experience [21]. However, many studies focus on short tasks, do not allow participant flexibility to explore diverse solutions, lack scale or participant diversity or do not have statistical significance.…”