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Supporting CS1 Instructors: Design and Evaluation of a Game Generator

Published: 26 June 2021 Publication History

Abstract

Serious games have shown much promise in education, including in the teaching of programming. However, instructors who teach introductory programming often do not have the specialised skills to create serious games. One way to address this problem is to use domain-specific game generators to create customised games as needed. This paper presents the design and empirical evaluation of a prototype game generator tool - the Recursive Game Generator. 30 programming instructors evaluated the tool and found it useful (87%), easy to use and learn (80%); and were satisfied with the tool's effectiveness and efficiency. Their positive experiences suggest that such a higher-order tool has the potential to increase the adoption of serious games in programming education, and broadly meet the needs of a diverse audience of instructors.

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Cited By

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  • (2024)Technologies to Support Adaptable Game Design: A Systematic Mapping StudyJournal of the Brazilian Computer Society10.5753/jbcs.2024.309030:1(69-101)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
  • (2023)Educator-oriented Authoring Tools to Develop Rich Educational Media: A Systematic Review2023 6th International Conference on Applied Computational Intelligence in Information Systems (ACIIS)10.1109/ACIIS59385.2023.10367320(1-6)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2023
  • (2022)A systematic mapping study on digital game adaptation dimensionsProceedings of the 21st Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3554364.3559122(1-14)Online publication date: 17-Oct-2022

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cover image ACM Conferences
ITiCSE '21: Proceedings of the 26th ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 1
June 2021
611 pages
ISBN:9781450382144
DOI:10.1145/3430665
Publication rights licensed to ACM. ACM acknowledges that this contribution was authored or co-authored by an employee, contractor or affiliate of a national government. As such, the Government retains a nonexclusive, royalty-free right to publish or reproduce this article, or to allow others to do so, for Government purposes only.

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Publication History

Published: 26 June 2021

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Author Tags

  1. CS1
  2. game design
  3. game generator
  4. instructors
  5. introductory programming
  6. novices
  7. recursion
  8. usability

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  • Research-article

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  • The National Research Foundation of South Africa
  • HASSO PLATTNER INSTITUTE

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Cited By

View all
  • (2024)Technologies to Support Adaptable Game Design: A Systematic Mapping StudyJournal of the Brazilian Computer Society10.5753/jbcs.2024.309030:1(69-101)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
  • (2023)Educator-oriented Authoring Tools to Develop Rich Educational Media: A Systematic Review2023 6th International Conference on Applied Computational Intelligence in Information Systems (ACIIS)10.1109/ACIIS59385.2023.10367320(1-6)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2023
  • (2022)A systematic mapping study on digital game adaptation dimensionsProceedings of the 21st Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3554364.3559122(1-14)Online publication date: 17-Oct-2022

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