University Students’ Perspectives On The Impact Of Games In Preparing For A Programming Course

Abstract

Programming in computing is often considered difficult and challenging by many students. This article discusses students’ perspectives on the impact of board games and online games in helping them prepare for their programming course. We compare two kinds of games: a modified board game called “Robot Turtles” and an online game called CodeCombat. The results of our study show that students prefer online games in comparison to board games. Moreover, they were also able to learn computing concepts through these games. One surprising observation from the study was that students from the class which used these games performed just as well in the mid-term programming assessment as students that were taught computing concepts using traditional teaching methods. This indicated that games could be used to replace traditional lecture methods in preparing students for an undergraduate programming course. Students who attended the class that used games experienced higher levels of confidence in writing and debugging a computer programme as compared to their peers who attended the class that used only traditional lectures.