Raquel B. Hijon-Neira
ABSTRACT
In Computer Science Education there is a tendency to implement active learning paradigms where students are the focus of the educational process. An instantiation of these learning methods are gaming environments. We present ProGames, a system for learning programming skills through a leveled set of visually-attractive and interactive programming games in Greenfoot, categorized by student's likes offering them solutions to sets of problems that they really enjoy or like most. The system has been evaluated during the academic course 2012-13 in three Computer Science Degrees and our results indicate that using ProGames had a most positive influence in the students learning. Moreover, the subjective opinion of students reflects that they really enjoyed working with the system and increased the engagement with the course.
- Kölling, M. 2010. The greenfoot programming environment. ACM Trans. Comput. Educ. 10, 4, Article 14 (November 2010), 21 pages. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Sandoval-Reyes, S., Galicia-Galicia, P. & Gutierrez-Sanchez, I. (2011, November). Visual Learning Environments for Computer Programming. In Electronics, Robotics and Automotive Mechanics Conference (CERMA), 2011 IEEE (pp. 439--444). IEEE. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Utting, I., Cooper, S., Kölling, M., Maloney, J. & Resnick, M. (2010). Alice, greenfoot, and scratch--a discussion. ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE), 10(4), 17. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Fincher, S. & Utting, I. (2010). Machines for thinking. ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE), 10(4), 13. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Doerschuk, P., Liu, J. & Mann, J. (2012, October). An INSPIRED Game Programming Academy for High School Students. In 2012 Frontiers in Education Conference Proceedings (pp. 1--6). IEEE. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Begosso, L. C., Begosso, L. R., Gonçalves, E. M. & Gonçalves, J. R. (2012, October). An approach for teaching algorithms and computer programming using Greenfoot and Python. In 2012 Frontiers in Education Conference Proceedings (pp. 1--6). IEEE. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Kuder, G. F. (1939). The Stability of Preference Items. Journal of Social Psychology, pages 41--50,Google ScholarCross Ref
- Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioural sciences (2nd ed.). Erlbaum: Hillsdale.Google Scholar
Index Terms
- Game programming for improving learning experience
Recommendations
Improving Students Learning Programming Skills with ProGames --- Programming through Games System
14th IFIP TC 13 International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction --- INTERACT 2013 - Volume 8120We present a system for learning programming skills, ProGames, through a leveled set of visually-attractive and interactive programming exercises in Greenfoot, categorized by students likes to offer them solutions to problems they really enjoy or like ...
Improving Undergraduates' Experience of Online Learning and Involvement: An Innovative Online Pedagogy
As educators and teachers pay more attention to the applications of educational technologies and websites to help students achieve satisfactory learning outcomes, it is necessary to develop effective teaching methods integrated with technologies for ...
The Scratch Programming Language and Environment
Scratch is a visual programming environment that allows users (primarily ages 8 to 16) to learn computer programming while working on personally meaningful projects such as animated stories and games. A key design goal of Scratch is to support self-...
Comments