Abstract

     Background and Context: Though still a nascent area of research, serious games have been presented as means of engaging students in computer programming and computational thinking due to their immersive and interactive nature. Existing research is limited in its ability to provide systems based on sound instructional design models, and only a few studies validate their design with statistical support.

     Objective: This study investigated the effects of a game which is based on experiential learning theory under framework of the fourcomponent instructional design model on undergraduate students’ learning performance in conceptual knowledge of object-oriented programming and computational thinking skills.

     Method: A pre-test and post-test quasi-experimental design was used to study the effects of the experiential serious games on conceptual knowledge of OOP and CT skills of 61 nonengineering students with and without prior programming knowledge

     Findings: The statistical analyses reveal that students with and without programming experience significantly improved their understanding of fundamental concepts of OOP. There were only weak correlations among students’ creative problem solving, attitudes towards digital game-based learning of programming, and learning.

     Implications: We provide several recommendations for researchers and practitioners for designing and developing an effective serious game to teach novice programmers computer programming.

Introduction

     Computer programming is one of most important skills of today’s world because modern societies rely on computer systems to drive industry, trade and nearly every aspect of human life. Additionally, computational thinking (CT) skills are the fundamental skills that lie at the bottom of computer programming. CT is a problem-solving approach in which solutions to problems are generated in a way that computers are able to perform (Wing, 2006). However, students have problems in understanding and analyzing a problem, building step-by-step algorithmic solution designs for problems (Guenaga et al., 2021; Xinogalos, 2016) and visualizing the programming concepts from a problem situation (AlSakkaf et al., 2019; Mladenovic et al., 2021) which result in demotivation. Hence, researchers adopted a digital game-based learning approach to help novice programmers overcome their learning problems and improve their performance on computer programming.

Results and analyses

Effects of a serious game on students’ conceptual knowledge of OOP and CT skills

     Conceptual knowledge of OOP and CT skills play an important role in understanding problems, designing and implementing solutions to problems in CS (Laakso et al., 2021; Liu et al., 2011; Wing, 2008). Therefore, the first two questions of the study focused on the effects of playing the developed game on students’ learning of conceptual knowledge of OOP and CT skills. The analyses of both groups’ data showed that both freshman and sophomore students significantly improved their conceptual knowledge of OOP and CT skills after playing the developed game. This result is consistent with the idea that serious games can be effective in fostering novice programmers’ programming knowledge (Abbasi et al., 2021; Guenaga et al., 2021; Livovsky & Poruban, 2014; Mathrani et al., 2016; Miljanovic & Bradbury, 2017; Muratet et al., 2011; O’Kelly & Gibson, 2006; Phelps et al., 2005; Sun et al., 2021).