Notice of Retraction: Game-based Learning for Data Structures: A case study

Abstract

Game-based Learning has always been the trend of tertiary education. It aims to make teaching and learning more interactive and engaging to achieve educational purposes. InTemasek Polytechnic, the course on Data Structures and Algorithms is offered to IT students as a second year subject. As the subject is very abstract in concepts and the algorithms are hard to visualise, it has been noted that students normally find the subject difficult and challenging. In this paper, we present a case study on using a computer game for teaching data structures on stacks and queues. The computer game is developed to help students visualize the data structures and data access operations on stacks and queues. A group of 28 second year IT students is selected to participate in the study. The findings have shown that the students are very positive towards the use of computer games in their learning of data structures. Students have responded that game-based learning is engaging, fun and, more importantly, abstract concepts in data structures can be visualized and learnt through game playing.