Using games to help novices embrace programming: from elementary to higher education

• Autores: Saša Mladenović, Divna Krpan, Monika Mladenović
• Localización: The International journal of engineering education, ISSN-e 0949-149X, Vol. 32, no. Extra 1 (Parte B ), 2016, págs. 521-531
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Learning programming is difficult and it presents a great challenge for both students and teachers. The goal is to increasesuccess rate for novice programmers. Students lose their confidence and motivation when they encounter difficulties suchas programming environment, language syntax knowledge, problem understanding and debugging. Programminglanguages are artificial and require high level of abstraction, which is not easy for young students. It is also commonknowledge that many adults have more difficulties with learning programming than children. In order to make thedifference, we introduced game making course for university undergraduate novice programmers and examined the effectof making games on attitude and motivation for elementary and high school children as well. The objective of using gamesin this context is to make students learn something serious and difficult like programming while doing something fun likemaking and playing games. Teachers with a strong understanding of the subject matter they teach are more likely toproduce successful students.