Designing educational games for computer programming: A holistic framework

Abstract

Abstract: Computer science is continuously evolving during the past decades. This has also brought forth new knowledge that should be incorporated and new learning strategies must be adopted for the successful teaching of all sub‑domains. For example, computer programming is a vital knowledge area within computer science with constantly changing curriculum and its teaching remains a difficult endeavour. On the other hand, students start from a very early age to interact with computers through games and other entertaining multimedia software. Therefore, they seem to be keen on environments with impressive special effects and graphical interfaces where they interact with the environments elements. In response, teachers are trying to connect computer programming learning with computer operations that students are familiar with, which does not include textual editors for programming lines of code with no other interaction. Educational games used in computer programming courses are considered to benefit learning, because they motivate students towards actively participating and interacting with the games activities. Thus, we have developed an educational multiplayer game that aims to further enhance computer programming education by addressing occurring problems. This process, however, requires proper planning during the design of educational games, and thus the availability of adequate guidelines that include all characteristics that should be incorporated in such games. This paper aims to introduce and elaborate on a holistic framework that has been constructed as a guide towards the development of this game. To this end, we study existing frameworks that have been proposed for the design of educational games and document features currently supported by educational games that teach computer programming. We conclusively propose the framework we have constructed for the design of our game. This framework can be used for the design of other computer programming‑specific educational games and extended for other educational domains.