As I was researching for my blog entries this week, I came across several articles that discuss students’ perspectives on gaming assignments when given the choice between two assignments. One of the assignments had a gaming theme to it and the other assignment did not. Very interesting results.
The study:
The Effectiveness of Games as Assignments in an Introductory Programming Course
Daniel C. Cliburn
Hanover College
http://www1.pacific.edu/~dcliburn/fie1171.pdf
In essence, this paper presents the results of a study that attempts to quantify the effectiveness of computer games as programming projects over non-games.
Students completed five major programming assignments during the semester in an introductory programming course. For each assignment, students were given an option between two programming projects, a game and a non-game.
In this study, the assignments offered were:
Project 1A: Number Guessing Game
Project 1B: Change Making Program.
Project 2A: The Marble Game
Project 2B: Factors of Numbers
Project 3A: The Casino Game
Project 3B: The Movie Theatre
Project 4A: Tic-Tac-Toe
Project 4B: Blob Finder
Project 5A: Hang Man
Project 5B: A Bookcase
Throughout the term, 78.9% of the assignments submitted by students were the game option. The average grade, however, on game assignments was 89.1%, while the non-game average was 95.1%.
Most notably, games tend to be more appealing to the male students, and competitive games may even “turn off” some females.
However, both genders did attempt more game assignments than non-games, supporting a conclusion that both genders prefer game assignments to non-games. As the assignments became longer and more complex, the games became even more popular.
The author stated, “the best students in the course were the ones choosing the non-game assignments.” In an informal conversation with a student early in the term, the author asked the student what criteria he was using for selecting projects. The student replied that he looked at both assignments and chose the one that he thought looked more difficult. That way, if he could figure out how to do the more difficult project, he was probably learning more in the course.
In a survey at the end of the course, the students were asked several questions. The most notable ones were:
Which project was your favorite? The casino project (Project 3A) was the top selection.
Did you enjoy working on game assignments? 22 out of 25 students (88%) responded “yes”.
Did the games provide any extra motivation for you to complete the project with a high level of quality? 21 out of 25 students (84%) answered “yes”.
The Study Conclusion
The study described by this paper attempted to answer the following questions:
Did students prefer game assignments to non-games? Students chose substantially more game assignments than non-games over the course of the term (78.9% to 21.1%)
Did games assignments improve student scores? No, they did not. Non-game assignments had a higher overall average (95.1%) than non-games (89.1%).
Was the motivation of students to learn programming skills increased when they had game assignments compared to non-games? 84% of the students surveyed answered “yes” when asked if the games provided any extra motivation to complete the projects with a high level of quality.
Probably the greatest lesson learned by the author while conducting this study was that all of the students enjoyed having a choice on the programming projects.
My Thoughts:
Although some of my previous research indicated that using some games to teach programming concepts was a positive move, this study gave me a prospect to consider.
The idea of giving a gaming AND a non-gaming assignment is intriguing. I had not thought of that before. I have given students choices between assignments, but typically they did not differ significantly in concepts.
I may actually try this for the last project in my introduction class this semester. If I can get all my ducks in a row, I’ll be sure to give you feedback from this project.
Clearly, providing students with a choice between a game and a non-game seems to offer the best of both worlds. The students who enjoy games and find them motivating are provided with this option. Any students who do not want to work on games do not have to.
References:
Cliburn, D., (2006). “The Effectiveness of Games as Assignments in an Introductory Programming Course”, ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference. http://www1.pacific.edu/~dcliburn/fie1171.pdf
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
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This is really interesting, Debbie! I liked your idea (and that of the authors) about giving both game and non-game assignments that use the same programming concepts. Some students (especially our older students) might much prefer an invoice creation program or a shopping cart program to a game.
ReplyDeleteI also found it interesting that all the games listed (except maybe the Marble Game) are games that we (programming teachers) have always assigned! We just didn't use fancy interfaces.
The one thing that always concerns me is, however, the interface. I remember when we taught Visual Basic. The last project was a game of tic-tac-toe and one student who worked long and hard on it told me that the last day of class everyone had to demonstrate his/her game. There was only ONE working game in the class (this diligent student's) but all the others looked gorgeous. All the students had spent enormous amounts of time creating a fantastic interface and thought, somehow, that this would mask the fact that the programming didn't work.
Now we use black screens with no pretty formatting (or, in my case, the white Raptor screen). There has to be a happy medium somewhere!
Liz
I agree with Liz's statement about students spending a lot of time on the interface when the functionality of the game is lacking or even completely broken. One of the things I always do is emphasize that functionality is the base requirement of the assignment, and I grade accordingly. Still, students try to hide flaws behind a nice interface!
ReplyDeleteI'm intrigued by the idea of offering two programming assignments to cover the same concept, one game-related and one non-game-related. Personnally, I would rush to complete the non-game version then have lots of time to develop the game version.
I remember when I was taking programming in college, and I spent a lot of time trying to tweak and embellish my programs (with the most efficient code possible) even though they had nothing to do with games. Must be my personality type. I find programming fun. :)
Debbie, do let us know if you go the two-program approach with your students. I'd love to hear how that works out!
- Hap Aziz