Using Game Frameworks to Teach Computer Programming

Teaching computer programming is an important task in the formation of computer scientists. Being a subject taught in the first years of student degrees, need to properly motivate students, so they try, at home, to learn by themselves, complementing that way their classes. This chapter proposes an approach to computer programming teaching based on the construction of videogames, using state of the art game frameworks. The author will show how the task of writing a game using a common framework deals with the basic programming concepts that are usually taught on a first course on computer programming, namely on object oriented programming languages like C# or Java: algebraic operations with variables, methods declaration, objects definition, objects hierarchy and multidimensional arrays. As it will be shown, even the common order of concepts presentation during the course can be kept, although applying them to computer games instead of the usually requested exercises.

Principles of a Casual Serious Game to Support Introductory Programming Learning in Higher Education

Casual games are characterized for their fast learning curve. Casual games tasks usually are short and have increasing difficulty. This seems an interesting approach to learn and practice introductory computer programming concepts for students that face difficulties. Many of serious games intended to support computer programming learning are commercial and aimed at children. Also only a few of those described in the literature are available to teachers. This chapter describes the development of a new game that aims to support introductory computer programming learning and its pilot study with three undergraduate introductory classes. The chapter proposes a set of design principles that might be useful in the development of casual games to support computer programming learning. These principles resulted from the experiment and include game features that were considered important to engage students and to improve some students' computer programming skills.

Design and Implementation of an IDE for Learning Programming Languages Using a Gamification Service

This chapter presents the architecture and design of Enki, an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for learning programming languages on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). This environment can be used as a tool by a Learning Management System (LMS) and a typical LMS such as Moodle can launch it using the Learning Tool Interoperability (LTI) API. Student authentication tokens are passed via LTI, thus integrating Enki in the single sign-on domain of the academic institution. The proposed tool has a web user interface similar to those of reference IDEs, where the learner has access to different integrated tools, from viewing tutorial videos, to solving programming exercises that are automatically evaluated. Enki uses several gamification strategies to engage learners, including generic gamifications services provided by Odin and the sequencing of educational resources. The course content (videos, PDFs, programming exercises) is progressively disclosed to the learner as he successfully completes exercises. This is similar to what happens in a game, where new levels are unlocked as the previous are completed, thus contributing to the sense of achievement.

A Survey on Game Backend Services

The industry of video games is one of the fastest growing sectors in the worldwide economy. One of the key factors to increase engagement and player retention, was the use of various common game concepts such as leaderboards and achievements. The massive use of this approach and the impressive growth of players led to the concept of gamification as a service, later materialized in Game Backend as a Service (GBaaS). Instead of replicating the implementation of the game features in each version of the game for several platforms, GBaaS adhere to a service oriented architecture providing cross-platform game services that lets you easily integrate popular gaming features such as achievements, leaderboards, remote storage and real-time multiplayer in games. This chapter surveys several GBaaS based on the features they offer and on their openness for the integration with computer programming environments.

Learning Engineering Skills through Creativity and Collaboration

Games are a very helpful tool for developing both technical and social skills and considerable experience has already been gained in using computer games for introducing young people to the digital world. Game-based educational tools have been proven to increase soft skills in learners, such as critical thinking, creative problem solutions, and abilities for teamwork. In this chapter the authors propose the use of computer games in a Computer Science course to provide students with a deeper and more complete acquisition of the skills required in Engineering than that available in ordinary lab exercises. The games used for the lab are real complete distributed applications based on a server and client part and open source, enabling students to study the code and propose changes to add functionalities or improve those already existing. The fact that these changes in the code affect students' satisfaction as players themselves makes the study more appealing and furnishes a better learning experience.

Scripting Environments of Gamified Learning Management Systems for Programming Education

This chapter is devoted to the scripting environments that are pivotal for the development and usage of gamified Learning Management Systems in programming education. They are classified into four types, which include: the student's code execution environment, the scripting wrapper for processing input and output of the code execution environment, the game-based rule processing environment, and the environment for processing scripts embedded in the course content. The chapter describes the functionality of each of these environments, with exemplary usage scenarios provided. Also, the key requirements for each environment are specified, and adequate design and technological solutions suggested. For open design decisions, consequences of choosing particular options are investigated.

Playing with Programming

This chapter aims to present Code, a friendly environment where students without previous programming experience can explore core-programming concepts in a motivating manner. It consists of a platform style game where students can control a virtual robot having their first contact with the construction of small pseudocode blocks. Research in teaching and learning of programming present several reasons for the difficulties students face when starting programming. In this chapter we have pointed out some of them. The studies performed also indicated that the aspects related to problem solving are the principal factors to attack in order to solve this problem. However, the main concern is how to provide a motivating environment that engages the student in computational thinking and problem solving. Code Factory's main objective is to create a new strategy making learning more stimulating for the students emphasizing problem solving in order to help develop fundamental programming skills.

Using 3D Virtual Worlds Integrated to Remote Experimentation in Sciences Teaching

Considering the need to stimulate the interest of students, it is essential to create more attractive environments for teaching, and laboratory activities are indicated as essential to correlate theory and practice. The use of remote labs allows students access remotely at anytime and anywhere, a real lab equipment. The integration of remote experiments with 3D virtual worlds allows the creation of a rich environment for contextualization of laboratory activity, providing the user with additional information about the experiment. Thus, this article aims to understand and relate existing jobs currently about virtual 3D worlds using the integrated Remote Experiments.

Game-Based Approaches, Gamification, and Programming Language Training

Programming language training is a process that necessitates the continuity of individual motivation and interest. Many of the students who are assigned to computer programming courses have a lack of motivation to engage in programming tasks. Computer games or in-class gamification activities which could provide the students an opportunity to get rid of the boring abstract coding, can be used as motivational tools for improving the effectiveness of learning in programming language training. In this context, the purposes of the chapter can be summarized under two titles: 1) In which ways computer games are used in and 2) how gamification strategies are adapted to programming language courses. Additonally, at the end of the chapter, authors gave a sample of an experimental gamification research that the academic and motivational effectiveness of game strategies were investigated in a ActionScript 3.0 course.

Applying Gamification in a Parallel Programming Course

Pursuing a college degree is a task that requires a great amount of time and effort. Universities are facing a big challenge to attract students and keep them motivated. The gamification of education is a practice that expects to increase the students' engagement, which in turn increases learning outcomes. Nevertheless, obtaining beneficial results from gamification requires educators to mold the teaching to include this new practice, usually involving a lot of effort. In this chapter, the authors present a new software tool developed to encourage gamification dynamics, and they describe their experience using this tool in a Parallel Programming course. The chapter describes the structure of the course, the different proposed activities, the organization of hardware resources, the design of the developed software tool, and an evaluation of the gamified course. The results show that the use of gamification techniques has been a great success. The authors have had a very positive response from their students, and there has been also a big percentage of passing students.