Game-themed programming assignments

Abstract

We have designed and implemented game-themed programming assignment modules targeted specifically for adoption in existing introductory programming classes. These assignments are self-contained, so that faculty members with no background in graphics or gaming can selectively pick and choose a subset to combine with their own assignments in existing classes. This paper begins with a survey of previous results. Based on this survey, the paper summarizes the important considerations when designing materials for selective adoption. The paper then describes our design, implementation, and assessment efforts. Our result is a road map that guides faculty members in experimenting with gamethemed programming assignments by incrementally adopting/customizing suitable materials for their classes.

Computer games and traditional CS courses

“…Because of the unknown entertainment value, strictly speaking, much of these are interesting and innovative teaching materials and are not computer games in a commercial sense. As discussed in Sung et al, 33 when examining recent efforts in integrating computer games into CS classes, we observe three general categories.…”

“…3,21,32,33,38 All these classes developed games as part of individual programming assignments. In each case, isolated games are designed around technical topics being studied.…”

“…20 It can be challenging in departmental committegrate games into their existing curriculum. Typically, games are used as programming assignments, 1,3,5,22,25,33,34,37 or to teach abstract concepts, 11,15,30 or as an example application area to teach the concepts involved in an entire topic area. 9 These are traditional CS classes that exist independent of game programming.…”

Assessing game-themed programming assignments for CS1/2 courses

“…Please refer to [28] for the details of the assignment design and development 1 . This section briefly describes the characteristics of the assignment modules.…”

“…The details of design and development of the game-themed assignments are discussed in [28]. In this paper, we first survey existing work done in combining CS1/2 courses with computer gaming.…”