Download Efficiency of WBLC

Serious games as didactic tool
for teaching programing
Jože Rugelj
Matej Zapušek, Irena Lancovska Šerbec
University of Ljubljana
Faculty of Education
Chair of Didactics of Computer Science
 Games can provide motivation for learning, thus
increasing the chance that the desired learning outcomes
will be achieved.
 Motivation is needed by students to focus attention, but
this is not enough. What makes computer game
educational?
 They must have well defined learning goals and have to
promote development of important strategies and skills
to increase cognitive and intellectual abilities of learners.
 Important elements contributing to educational values of
games are sensual stimuli, fantasy, challenge and
curiosity (desire to know or learn).
 A lot of educational computer games designed according to
behavioristic theory of learning: tutorials, which are
basically forms of programmed instruction.
 one correct answer, immediate response
 positive response (happy sound, positive
character reaction that
stimulate positive emotions), instance of action-reaction pair
enforced.
 with wrong answer the connection has to be weaken and reaction
is provided in a form of negative stimuli.
 Trivia games, quizzes, point and click games…all of them
have drill and practice concept build in a very core of the
game design and are broadly used in game based learning.
 Constructivist learning emphasizes discovery and
inquiry learning arguing that students should be placed in
a model of abstracted reality (modeled within computer
game) where they construct their own knowledge.
 Serious games can provide support for knowledge
construction rather than declaring the knowledge in
behavioristic fashion.
 Instructional content can be blurred within a game.
 Player is expected to elicit desirable behaviours based
on emotional and cognitive reactions that result from
interaction with a game.
 Seven pedagogical goals for constructivist game design:
1. to provide an experience with the knowledgeconstruction process
2. to provide experiences encouraging appreciation of
multiple perspectives
3. to embed learning in realistic and relevant contexts
4. to encourage ownership in the learning process
5. to embed learning in social experience
6. to encourage the use of multiple modes of representation
7. to encourage self-awareness of the knowledge
construction process
 Students play the game and have fun, forgetting about
the “learning” part of the experience (even though they
are constantly presented with new concepts which they
have to adapt in order to be successful in a game.)
 Students need motivation to focus on what needs to be
learned but for any quality learning to occur this is
not enough.
Features of game for effective learning
 Motivation
games motivating for players, important to understand the sources of
motivation to provide a foundation for learning.
 The role of failure
the price of failure is lowered, seen as a way to learn the underlying
pattern; these features of failure in games allow players to take risks
that might be too costly.
 Competition and collaboration
gamers enjoy competition with other players in games, but may not
see competition as pleasurable and motivating in school;
competition is seen by gamers as social, as much about gaming as
winning and losing.
 Interactivity
player doesn't just passively consume knowledge but has control
over content
 Customisation
based on learning styles and providing multiple routes to success
 Strong identities
games offer players identities that trigger a deep investment on the
part of the player and which are clearly associated with the functions,
skills and goals one has to carry out in the virtual world.
 Well-sequenced problems
in connectionist approaches to learning, it is argued that sequencing
is crucial for effective learning in complex domains
 A pleasant level of frustration
adjusting challenges in such a way that a range of players can
experience the game as challenging but do-able
 A cycle of expertise
repeated cycles of extended practice and tests of mastery
 ‘Deep’ and ‘fair’
game must be challenging but set up in a way that leads to success;
i.e. gameplay elements should be initially simple and easy to learn
and become more complex the more the player comes to master
them.
Learning programming
 Programming is difficult to learn (Mendes&Gomes, 2007) because:
 teaching is not personalized,
 teachers’ strategies don’t support all students’
learning styles,
 the teaching of dynamic concepts through static
materials,
 teachers are more concentrated on teaching a
programming language and its syntactic details,
 students use incorrect study methods,
 students don’t work hard enough to acquire
programming competences,
 students don’t know how to solve problems,
 many students don’t have enough mathematical
and
logical knowledge,
 students lack specific programming expertise,
 programming demands a high level of abstraction,
 programming learning requires skills like abstraction,
generalization, transfer and critical thinking,
 programming languages have a very complex syntax,
 students don’t have motivation,
 students have to learn programming in a difficult
period of their life.
3.5
3.0
2.5
Difficulty
Difficult concepts in programming
Lahtinen, Ala-Mutka, Järvinen, 2007
5.0
4.5
4.0
Učenci
Učitelji
2.0
1.5
1.0
Uporaba programskih knjižnic
Operiranje z napakami
Abstraktni podatkovni tipi
Strukturni podatkovni tipi
Kazalci, reference
Rekurzija
Tabele
Zanke
Spremenljivke
Učenci
Učitelji
7.0
6.5
6.0
5.5
5.0
4.5
4.0
3.5
3.0
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
Difficulty
Difficult concepts in programing
Milne in Rowe , 2002
Razredi in objekti
Datoteke
Druge podatkovne
strukture
Strukture
Rekurzija
Kazalci
Klici funkcij
Prenos po…
Deklaracije…
Nizi
Tabele
Pogojni stavki
Zanke
Operatorji
Project SEGAN (LLP)
SEGAN - Community of Practice about Serious Games
 It produces reports on the design, development, and
evaluation of Serious Games and their use in specific
contexts.
 Network supported by virtual tools and face to face events.
 SEGAN results also include:
development of a repository with products and projects relatedto
SeriousGames
 setting up of small-scale, local events on the design and
development of SeriousGames
 setting up of a series of annual European conferences and
SummerSchools

http://www.facebook.com/groups/segan
Serious games student projects
 Design of serious games is suitable for teacher education.
 Students at the Faculty of Education, UL, design and


implement serious games as a part of their study activities.
The profile of graduates from “CS in education”
Different learning goals for students:






analysis of all crucial elements,
identification of learning goals by teachers / curriculum,
definition of a didactical approach,
specification technical requirements,
implementation,
testing and evaluation.
SEGAN project
16
 Serious games were designed and implemented by:
 graduates as diploma work
 by groups of four undergraduate students
as project
activity in a course Use of ICT in education
in the 4th year of CS teachers study program
 The results of project work are twofold:
 students summarize interdisciplinary
knowledge at the
end of their study
 games, produced in this process, are excellent didactic
material for pupils
SEGAN project
17
Web portal for serious games at FE UL
hrast.pef.uni-lj.si/igre
18
Design process
 Specification of “didactical problem”
 Analysis phase
curriculum, time, resources, technology, …
 Design
content, “story”, graphical, feedback,
 Implementation
 Testing and evaluation
SEGAN project
19
World of Variables
 Diploma thesis
 The goal of the game is to organize the logistics for delivery
of goods to some planets in the universe.
 Learning goals:


variables (types, declarations,…)
assignments
 Target audience: primary school
 Semantic model, independent
of syntax
 Understanding of concepts
SEGAN project
20
Learning goals
 Pupil after playing a game
understands the idea of variable,
 knows variable has a name,
 is aquainted with with types of variables,
 is aware of the fact that different types are not compatible,
 knows that different types require different amount of memory,
 is familiar with assignement statements,
 is aware of meaning of both “sides” of assignment,
 knows what is the value of variable after assignment,
 can predict the values of variables after executing part of a
program (with several assignements).

Game 1: Cleaning up the mess in the lab
Game 2: Carriers
Game 3: Exam for raw material carriers
New didactic game: functions
Conclusions
 Game can be very powerful instructional
technology.
 Its use can be justified by all relevant learning
theories.
 But it can only be efficient, when it is properly
integrated into learning / teaching
 Very challenging topic in computer science
teacher education!