How Buenos Aires University Uses Gaming in Teaching Concepts

I came across a study completed at the Computer Science Department of Universidad Nacional del Centro de la Provincia de Buenos Aires. The name of the study is “The Use of Games to Teach Programming Algorithms” by Laura Felice and Martin Fernandez.

I am always fascinated to see how other universities (local and abroad) are teaching computer science courses. I am finding that many are “playing” with the idea of using gaming design and techniques to introduce programming and logic. They are conducting studies each semester to see what degree of measurement that games will bring to teaching programming concepts.

This is exactly where I’d like to be in developing the programming curriculum at my school, Santa Fe College in Gainesville, FL. I don’t necessarily want to reinvent the wheel and what I can learn by other school’s studies will help me develop a curriculum that will be intriguing, fascinating and perhaps exciting to students who had not considered programming exciting.

In addition, this study held extra interest for me. They used C++ in their course in teaching algorithms and programming. Our Introduction to Programming course also uses C++.

Here are a few findings from the study completed by Felice and Fernandez:

The first issue with which students are confronted when writing programs is the problem. Typically, students are confronted with "real-life'' problems, and they provide a program for the problem.

However, real-life problems are nebulous and the first thing they have to do is to try to understand the problem separating necessary from unnecessary details. So, they obtain their own abstract view, or model, of the problem. This process of modeling is called abstraction of the design.

Games are systems based on simple rules and relationships. Many of them can be applied to different situations, so the opportunity of reuse is present many times.

Games are only an instructional resource for us, and teachers can adapt the requirements to meet the course objectives and to evaluate the students. Another advantage of this kind of project is that games have the capability to change the scale, and developers (i.e. students) can use them as opportunities for players to share and critique strategies, then they appreciate this way of learning and they are motivated to get quality results.

The application was developed in C++ standard. C++ was designed with libraries always in mind, and its most useful features are those that help to write portable, efficient, easy-to-use libraries. The main idea is that the application runs in many platforms, so the used libraries are multi- platform.

Felice and Fernandez conclusion:

The experiment of programming teaching with games has been very satisfactory and has helped us reach some interesting conclusions in relation to the effectiveness of this approach. This kind of works enriches the learning not only of the student but also of the teachers who have to investigate and have to plan an appropriate framework to develop the projects and to make a creative job. We consider that it could be reproduced in any Computer Science study program and we think it is an innovative approach that is interesting to be applied. The necessary prerequisites can be provided by introductory courses on programming, computer science, and mathematics.

My conclusion:

The idea that games enriched the learning capability of both the teacher and the student is profound. From these results, it’s obvious that students enjoyed designing and creating games and using the concepts necessary to make the game as instructed.

In my own classes where I assign a game as a project, I see students that will go the extra mile to make hangman literally hang and matching the states with the capitals have extra support by displaying flags, state flowers, state mottos, etc. These items are above and beyond the programming specifications I have laid out for the assignment.

If programming a gaming project is fun, the student will enjoy making the game work.

I have assigned a guessing game as the next project in my COP1000 – Introduction to Programming class. I will let you know the results and quality of the projects I see this coming week. Stay tuned!

References:

Felice, L. & Fernandez M. (2006). “The Use of Games to Teach Programming Algorithms”, Departamento de Computación y Sistemas. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. UNCPBA Tandil. 7000. Buenos Aires. Argentina

http://www.isedj.org/isecon/2006/2525/ISECON.2006.Felice.pdf