A Review of Serious Games for Programming

A Review of Serious Games for Programming

by Michael A. Miljanovic, Jeremy S. Bradbury

Abstract: A large number of games are available to students and instructors that aid in developing a basic understanding of how to read and write programs. In this paper we review the existing serious programming game literature and examine the educational content and game evaluations of 49 games. First, we assess all games with respect to the programming fundamentals specified in the ACM 2013 Computer Science Curricula guidelines. Next, we review how each game is evaluated with respect to likability, accessibility, learning effect and engagement. In addition to the evaluated research questions, we also review the research methods used in the evaluations. Based on the results of our survey we conclude by identifying a number of open problems in the serious programming games literature.

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