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Title
Abstract
Introduction
Related Work
Design
Gameplay Overview
Progression Design
Experimental Design and Procedure
Post-Test Design
Participants
Results
Discussion and Limitations
Study Demographics
Design Limitations
Conclusion and Future Work
References
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Computer Science
Computational Linguistics

Teaching Programming with Gamified Semantics

Profile image of François GuimbretièreFrançois Guimbretière

2017, Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

https://doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3025711
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13 pages

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Abstract

Dominant approaches to programming education emphasize program construction over language comprehension. We present Reduct, an educational game embodying a new, comprehension-first approach to teaching novices core programming concepts which include functions, Booleans, equality, conditionals, and mapping functions over sets. In this novel teaching strategy, the player executes code using reductionbased operational semantics. During gameplay, code representations fade from concrete, block-based graphics to the actual syntax of JavaScript ES2015. We describe our design rationale in depth and report on the results of a study evaluating the efficacy of our approach on young adults (18+) without prior coding experience. In a short timeframe, novices demonstrated promising learning of core concepts expressed in actual JavaScript. We discuss ramifications for the design of future computational thinking games.

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    armaan shah

    Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2019

    While problem solving is a crucial aspect of programming, few learning opportunities in computer science focus on teaching problem-solving skills like planning. In this paper, we present Pyrus, a collaborative game designed to encourage novices to plan in advance while programming. Through Pyrus, we explore a new approach to designing educational games we call behavior-centered game design, in which designers first identify behaviors that learners should practice to reach desired learning goals and then select game mechanics that incentivize those behaviors. Pyrus leverages game mechanics like a failure condition, distributed resources, and enforced turn-taking to encourage players to plan and collaborate. In a within-subjects user study, we found that pairs of novices spent more time planning and collaborated more equally when solving problems in Pyrus than in pair programming. These findings show that game mechanics can be used to promote desirable learning behaviors like planning in advance, and suggest that our behavior-centered approach to educational game design warrants further study. • Human-centered computing → Collaborative and social computing systems and tools;

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    Evaluating ProDirect manipulation in hour of code
    Quan Do

    Proceedings of the 2019 ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on SPLASH-E, 2019

    We examine whether augmenting traditional coding environments with ProDirect manipulation improves several learning measures. ProDirect manipulation is a novel user interaction model that provides a bidirectional link between code and outputs. Instead of reasoning abstractly about the output a program might produce, users instead directly manipulate outputs (e.g., using a keyboard and mouse). Program text is then updated to reflect the change. We report the effects on learning using a ProDirect manipulation environment versus a standard development environment for more than one hundred middle school students. To conduct the study, we built SWELL, a programming language with ProDirect manipulation features. We conclude that within the context of an Hour-of-Code course, ProDirect manipulation does not offer a significant advantage. We also make several observations regarding the way students interact with SWELL, which may inform future language design for this age group.

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    Knowledge assessment
    Heather Risser

    Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, 2019

    Using serious games as a form of training and education has been a growing trend. While there has been research into the adaptation of games for training, assessment of user knowledge as a whole for the purpose of creating tailored training content has not been closely examined. In this paper, we propose a general framework for creating an assessment game and show how Knowledge Assessment can be used to guide the focus of subsequent training modules. Using our framework, we address the frustration and anxiety expressed by medical and nursing professionals about their lack of training regarding indicators of child physical abuse (CPA) in the United States. We develop the Computer Simulated Interactive Child Abuse Screening Tool (CSI-CAST), which contains scenarios in a serious game and uses assistive AI technologies to assess a group of users and discover features that are important in indicating the users' collective knowledge identifying CPA. A user study is conducted to show that CSI-CAST is easy to use and it functions to discover specific training needs.

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    Motivating Students to Learn How to Write Code Using a Gamified Programming Tutor
    Neil Gordon

    Education Sciences

    Engagement and retention are widely acknowledged problems in computer science and more general higher education. The need to develop programming skills is increasingly ubiquitous, but especially so in computer science where it is one of the core competencies. Learning to write code is a particularly challenging skill to master, which can make retention and success even more difficult. We attempt to address student engagement within an introductory programming module by attempting to motivate students using a gamified interactive programming tutor application that provides immediate feedback on the student’s work. In this paper, we describe the design of the gamified programming tutor application, along with a related topology to characterize student engagement. We discuss the design of the software, the gamified elements, and the structured question design. We evaluate the engagement with the gamified programming tutor of two cohorts of students in the first year of a computer scien...

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