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Informing Content-driven Design of Computer Programming Games: a Problems Analysis and a Game Review

Published: 23 October 2016 Publication History

Abstract

Currently, educational games are being developed to teach children the basics of computer programming. Research and design of such games is usually based on general learning theories. Yet, computer programming poses specific types of difficulties to novice programmers. Taking into account these particular characteristics and problems of computer programming as a learning content in the design of programming games could allow for producing games that are more suitable to the needs of novice programmers. This paper first reports on a novice programmer problems analysis, to gain insight into learners' specific difficulties. Then, a review of existing programming games is presented to investigate how and to which extent these games deal with specific programming problems. The results of these studies aim to contribute to the requirements and ideation phases of a programming game design process, thereby informing a learning content-driven design perspective.

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      NordiCHI '16: Proceedings of the 9th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction
      October 2016
      1045 pages
      ISBN:9781450347631
      DOI:10.1145/2971485
      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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      Published: 23 October 2016

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      Author Tags

      1. Educational games
      2. computer programming games
      3. instructional design

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      NordiCHI '16 Paper Acceptance Rate 58 of 231 submissions, 25%;
      Overall Acceptance Rate 379 of 1,572 submissions, 24%

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      • (2024)Supporting Computing-centred Intuitions for Quantum Computing through PlayCompanion Proceedings of the 2024 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play10.1145/3665463.3678850(404-408)Online publication date: 14-Oct-2024
      • (2023)Studying the effects of educational games on cultivating computational thinking skills to primary school students: a systematic literature reviewJournal of Computers in Education10.1007/s40692-023-00300-z11:4(1283-1325)Online publication date: 21-Nov-2023
      • (2022)A Review of Educational Games for Teaching Programming to Primary School StudentsResearch Anthology on Developments in Gamification and Game-Based Learning10.4018/978-1-6684-3710-0.ch003(55-83)Online publication date: 2022
      • (2021)Studying the effects of teaching programming to lower secondary school students with a serious game: a case study with Python and CodeCombatEducation and Information Technologies10.1007/s10639-021-10596-yOnline publication date: 31-May-2021
      • (2021)A Proposal for an Educational Game Platform for Teaching Programming to Primary School StudentsTechnology and Innovation in Learning, Teaching and Education10.1007/978-3-030-73988-1_38(463-475)Online publication date: 11-Apr-2021
      • (2020)A Review of Educational Games for Teaching Programming to Primary School StudentsHandbook of Research on Tools for Teaching Computational Thinking in P-12 Education10.4018/978-1-7998-4576-8.ch001(1-30)Online publication date: 2020
      • (2019)Motivating Students Beyond Course Requirements with a Serious GameProceedings of the 50th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education10.1145/3287324.3287364(211-217)Online publication date: 22-Feb-2019
      • (2019)Current Trends in On-line Games for Teaching Programming Concepts to Primary School StudentsTechnology and Innovation in Learning, Teaching and Education10.1007/978-3-030-20954-4_5(62-78)Online publication date: 29-May-2019
      • (2018)A pilot study on the effectiveness and acceptance of an educational game for teaching programming concepts to primary school studentsEducation and Information Technologies10.1007/s10639-018-9702-x23:5(2029-2052)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2018
      • (2017)Using Eye-Tracking to Unveil Differences Between Kids and Teens in Coding ActivitiesProceedings of the 2017 Conference on Interaction Design and Children10.1145/3078072.3079740(171-181)Online publication date: 27-Jun-2017

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