research-article

Crossing the game threshold: a system for teaching basic programming constructs

Authors:

Masood Masoodian,

Bill RogersAuthors Info & Claims

CHINZ '12: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference of the NZ Chapter of the ACM's Special Interest Group on Human-Computer Interaction

Pages 56 - 63

https://doi.org/10.1145/2379256.2379266

Published: 02 July 2012 Publication History

Abstract

Teaching elementary programming is a difficult and often frustrating process. Many students fail to grasp the basic concepts and drop out of their programmes of study. Although visual languages with some form of game element have been explored as a solution to this problem, evidence on the success of these is at best mixed, without much empirical evaluation to support various claims that are made by their developers. In this paper we argue for and present a more limited programming game system for teaching basic programming constructs to beginner programmers at junior high school level. We also present an evaluation of this game which shows that students participating in this study enjoyed playing the game and succeeded in advancing through progressively more challenging stages of the game, which rely on understanding the underlying programming constructs.

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Cited By

Tareque MDeutekom SAnvik JBashir M(2024)Program Wars v.2.0 : Improving a Game-based Learning Approach for Teaching Fundamental Programming ConceptsProceedings of the 26th Western Canadian Conference on Computing Education10.1145/3660650.3660671(1-7)Online publication date: 2-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3660650.3660671
Tareque MAnvik JStephenson BStone JBattestilli LRebelsky SShoop L(2024)Learning Software Engineering Principles with Program Wars v.3.0Proceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 210.1145/3626253.3635551(1836-1837)Online publication date: 14-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3626253.3635551
Anvik JCote VRiehl JHawthorne EPérez-Quiñones MHeckman SZhang J(2019)Program WarsProceedings of the 50th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education10.1145/3287324.3287496(393-399)Online publication date: 22-Feb-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3287324.3287496
Show More Cited By

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Crossing the game threshold: a system for teaching basic programming constructs

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cover image ACM Other conferences

CHINZ '12: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference of the NZ Chapter of the ACM's Special Interest Group on Human-Computer Interaction

July 2012

110 pages

ISBN:9781450314749

DOI:10.1145/2379256

Conference Chair:
Holger Regenbrecht
University of Otago
,
Program Chairs:
Christof Lutteroth,
Mark McGuire

Copyright © 2012 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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New Zealand Chapter of ACM SIGCHI

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 02 July 2012

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CHINZ '12

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CHINZ '12: 13th Annual Conference of the NZ ACM Special Interest Group on Human-Computer Interaction

July 2 - 3, 2012

Dunedin, New Zealand

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Cited By

Tareque MDeutekom SAnvik JBashir M(2024)Program Wars v.2.0 : Improving a Game-based Learning Approach for Teaching Fundamental Programming ConceptsProceedings of the 26th Western Canadian Conference on Computing Education10.1145/3660650.3660671(1-7)Online publication date: 2-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3660650.3660671
Tareque MAnvik JStephenson BStone JBattestilli LRebelsky SShoop L(2024)Learning Software Engineering Principles with Program Wars v.3.0Proceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 210.1145/3626253.3635551(1836-1837)Online publication date: 14-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3626253.3635551
Anvik JCote VRiehl JHawthorne EPérez-Quiñones MHeckman SZhang J(2019)Program WarsProceedings of the 50th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education10.1145/3287324.3287496(393-399)Online publication date: 22-Feb-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3287324.3287496
Lindberg RLaine THaaranen L(2018)Gamifying programming education in K‐12: A review of programming curricula in seven countries and programming gamesBritish Journal of Educational Technology10.1111/bjet.1268550:4(1979-1995)Online publication date: 11-Sep-2018
https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12685
Duarte EPearce J(2017)A cross-cultural review of lightbot for introducing functions and code reuseJournal of Computing Sciences in Colleges10.5555/3144645.314466033:2(100-105)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3144645.3144660
Sung KNash RPace J(2016)Building casual game SDKS for teaching CS1/2Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges10.5555/3007225.300725332:1(129-143)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3007225.3007253
Lugaric TPavlic ZSkvorc D(2016)Object-oriented programming model for synthesis of domain-specific application development environment2016 39th International Convention on Information and Communication Technology, Electronics and Microelectronics (MIPRO)10.1109/MIPRO.2016.7522315(1162-1167)Online publication date: May-2016
https://doi.org/10.1109/MIPRO.2016.7522315
Hijón-Neira RVelázquez-Iturbide ÁPizarro-Romero CCarriço L(2013)Improving Students Learning Programming Skills with ProGames --- Programming through Games System14th IFIP TC 13 International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction --- INTERACT 2013 - Volume 812010.1007/978-3-642-40498-6_48(579-586)Online publication date: 2-Sep-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-642-40498-6_48

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