Cited By
View all- Kantharaju PAlderfer KZhu JChar BSmith BOntanon S(2022)Modeling Player Knowledge in a Parallel Programming Educational GameIEEE Transactions on Games10.1109/TG.2020.303750514:1(64-75)Online publication date: Mar-2022
Reduct: A Puzzle Game for Children About Evaluating Code
Authors: 
Ian Arawjo, David Li, Kevin MaAuthors Info & Claims
Ian Arawjo, David Li, Kevin MaAuthors Info & ClaimsPages 202 - 205
Abstract
We present Reduct, a puzzle game to teach programming language semantics to novices, especially children. Unlike previous puzzle games, Reduct gamifies the actual evaluation steps involved in executing code. Players discover behavior of language constructs through play by evaluating code snippets towards a goal. The game progression covers several basic concepts of JavaScript ES2015, including functions, Booleans, ternary conditionals, arrays, Array.map(), variables, and more. To help reduce self-handicapping behavior, code representations begin in a concrete form and fade to abstract notation over time.
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References
[1]
Ian Arawjo, Cheng-Yao Wang, Andrew C. Myers, Erik Andersen, and Francois Guimbretiere. 2017. Teaching Programming with Gamified Semantics. In CHI '17. ACM, New York, NY, USA. (Forthcoming).
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Karen Ann Brennan. 2013. Best of both worlds: Issues of structure and agency in computational creation, in and out of school. Ph.D. Dissertation. MIT.
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Educationdive.com. 2016. Challenges persist when gamifying education. (December 2016).
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Emily R Fyfe, Nicole M McNeil, and Stephanie Borjas. 2015. Benefits of "concreteness fading" for children's mathematics understanding. Learning and Instruction 35 (2015), 104--120.
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Emily R Fyfe, Nicole M McNeil, Ji Y Son, and Robert L Goldstone. 2014. Concreteness fading in mathematics and science instruction: A systematic review. Educational Psychology Review 26, 1 (2014), 9--25.
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John H Maloney, Kylie Peppler, Yasmin Kafai, Mitchel Resnick, and Natalie Rusk. 2008. Programming by choice: urban youth learning programming with scratch. Vol. 40. ACM.
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Index Terms
- Reduct: A Puzzle Game for Children About Evaluating Code
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Information & Contributors
Information
Published In
May 2017
3954 pages
ISBN:9781450346566
DOI:10.1145/3027063
- General Chairs:
- Gloria Mark,
- Susan Fussell,
- Program Chairs:
- Cliff Lampe,
- m.c. schraefel,
- Juan Pablo Hourcade,
- Caroline Appert,
- Daniel Wigdor
Copyright © 2017 Owner/Author.
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all 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 third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.
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Association for Computing Machinery
New York, NY, United States
Publication History
Published: 06 May 2017
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CHI '17
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CHI EA '17 Paper Acceptance Rate 1,000 of 5,000 submissions, 20%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 6,164 of 23,696 submissions, 26%
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CHI 2025
- Sponsor:
- sigchi
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Cited By
View all- Kantharaju PAlderfer KZhu JChar BSmith BOntanon S(2022)Modeling Player Knowledge in a Parallel Programming Educational GameIEEE Transactions on Games10.1109/TG.2020.303750514:1(64-75)Online publication date: Mar-2022
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