=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2733/paper1
|storemode=property
|title=Programming Teaching Experience for Boys and Girls following a Gamified Approach
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2733/paper1.pdf
|volume=Vol-2733
|authors=Iago Cruz-García,Juan Antonio Martín-García,Diana Pérez-Marín,Celeste Pizarro
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/siie/Cruz-GarciaMPP20
}}
==Programming Teaching Experience for Boys and Girls following a Gamified Approach==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2733/paper1.pdf
Programming Teaching Experience for Boys and
Girls following a Gamified Approach
Iago Cruz-G arcía
G
Juan Antonio Martín-García Diana Pérez-Marín
Computer Science and Statistics Dept. Computer Science and Statistics Dept. Computer Science and Statistics Dept.
Universidad Rey Juan Carlos Universidad Rey Juan Carlos Universidad Rey Juan Carlos
Móstoles, Madrid, Spain Móstoles, Madrid, Spain Móstoles, Madrid, Spain
i.cruz.2016@alumnos.urjc.es ja.martin.2016@alumnos.urjc.es diana.perez@urjc.es
Celeste Pizarro
Applied Mathematics Dept.
Universidad Rey Juan Carlos
Móstoles, Madrid, Spain
celeste.pizarro@urjc.es
Abstract—Teaching programming in Primary Education is successfully develop high level abilities in students such as
a worldwide research interest topic. Currently, there are several solving problems, teamwork, spatial vision development as
approaches that are being analyzed with more or less success in well as to reduce stress and develops motor skills [3, 6].
terms of learning gains, levels of motivation, and satisfaction. In
this paper, the proposal is to use a gamified approach. However, to maintain gamification it is important to
Hypothesis 1 (H1) is that the gamified approach will increase highlight the need of stablish concrete and achievable goals
students' learning gains while also increasing their level of for the player [7] and challenges with incremental levels of
satisfaction and motivation. Hypothesis 2 (H2) is that there will difficulty.
be no significant differences between boys and girls from 10 to
12 years old. During the 2019/2020 academic year, an Hypothesis 1 (H1) is that the gamification approach for
experiment was carried out with 100 students from 10 to 12 teaching programming in Primary Education will improve
years old. All students have started their programming learning students’ learning scores as well as their satisfaction and
through a gamified approach, varying the resource used motivation levels. Hypothesis 2 (H2) is that there will not be
(teacher, Blockly, Blockly + video game). The results gathered significant differences between boys and girls from 10 to 12
support H1 and H2 and yield interesting results to continue years old when learning to program with gamification.
analyzing the differences between the resources used.
To verify these hypotheses during 2019/2020 school year,
Keywords — Teaching programming, videogame, an experiment has been done with 100 students from 10 to 12
gamification, Primary Education years old taking 4th, 5th and 6th school years of Primary
Education, from October 2019 to February 2020 before the
I. INTRODUCTION lockdown stopped from continuing in-person data gathering.
Teaching programming in early ages has received a lot of During the experiment, all students have followed a
attention worldwide in the latest decades [1]. Some authors gamification approach to understand basic programming
assert that children could improve their understanding of the concepts: input/output, conditionals and loops, varying the
digital world where they live and even develop their gamified resources: a teacher suggesting goals and challenges
computational thinking [2] to be able to solve life problems in class playing with metaphors to teaching programming,
with computer resources. Blockly for introducing basic programming concepts, and a
videogame developed as final degree work from first author
This paper focuses on teaching programming to improve
during 2019/2020 school year.
primary education children’s programming abilities, while
they enjoy the learning process and keep their motivation. To Research questions are the following ones:
achieve this, the proposal focuses on teaching programming
in Primary Education by using a gamification approach. Q1. Which differences exist between results of
different groups?
Gamification can be defined as using game design
elements in non-gaming environments to increase motivation Q2. Which differences exist between results from
and satisfaction. Previous research show that gamified boys and girls?
environments usually get better results in education than non- Results gathered support H1 and H2. This paper is
gamified ones, as long as the design is done correctly. This structured in four sections: Section 2 presents the proposal,
consists of introducing rewards, game mechanisms and global Section 3 describes the experiment, and Section 4 ends the
design, not only isolated elements [3]. paper with main conclusions and future lines of work.
The proposal focuses on using resources as metaphors [4]
as if programming was cooking, Blockly [5] and videogames
[6]. Using videogames for educational purposes has proven to
Copyright © 2020 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
II. PROPOSAL
A. Gamified use of metaphors with teachers
To teach programming teachers need a guide. In our
previous work, it was proposed the use of scripts step by step
based on metaphors [4]. Underlying concept is that children
between 10 and 12 years old usually enjoy cooking, and
programming could follow the cooking metaphor.
In both cases there is a goal, make food or achieving
program’s goal, and to get to that point instructions must be
followed step by step. In case of food, instructions would be
the recipe steps. Order is important because if, for example,
we wanted to cook a potato omelette and oil is not hot,
potatoes will not be fried correctly and omelette will not taste
good. Likewise, if we want to make a program achieve its goal
and we do not follow order of output instructions, the output Fig. 1. Blockly screenshot (source: [5])
will not be the expected one.
Blockly has been chosen over Scratch because, in the
Table I shows a summary of main metaphors used [4]. opinion of the authors and our proposal, because students have
TABLE I. SUMMARY OF THE METAPHORS USED a console they could use as if it were a professional
programming environment. It is also likely that students from
# Subject Concept Metaphor
1 Program, Program- recipe
10 to 12 years old they have already used Scratch in previous
programming, sequence years (in example, between 8 and 10 years old), therefore
sequence, memory Memory, Pantry, box continuing with Blockly allows them to go deeper into
variables knowledge about input/output instructions, conditionals and
2 Intput / output Output Computer Screen loops.
instructions
Gamification integrates itself in Blockly by elements
Input Keyboard, computer previously described: concrete goals [7] and increasing
screen result difficulty challenges [8]. Goals are given by the teacher
3 Conditionals Child taking Computer taking
choices choices
because Blockly is a blank canvas for the student to program,
4 Loops Preparing table Computer repeating but it does not have a guide to show them what to do. Same
for X persons instructions X times goals as case II.A are proposed, related to input/output,
conditionals and loops concepts.
The playful component as was stated in the introduction In particular, exercises’ statements requested to children
has to be planned with concrete goals [7] and challenges with as programming challenges in Blockly are:
increasing difficulty levels [8]. For this reason, it is proposed Write a program to show your name in screen
that the teacher not only uses metaphors, but that they propose (program concept, sequence, I/O).
challenge to children where they have to use those metaphors
to solve a challenge, such as making a banquet and using Write a program to ask how old a classmate is, and
pseudocode programming on paper for that purpose, as show it in screen (program concept, sequence, I/O,
explained in [9]. variable).
Once children get certainty and rewards like being Write a program to check if a number is odd or even
congratulated by the teacher, acknowledgement from their (program concept, sequence, conditional, I/O,
equals in class and some stickers in a physical medal board, variable).
then challenge difficulty can be increased. This way, if they
could achieve to make the program that allowed them to make Write a program to add, subtract, multiply and divide
the banquet, the following step could be making a program two numbers (program concept, sequence,
that allows them to organize weekly menus of a fantasy conditional, I/O, variable).
kingdom that could be created by teacher and students. As in II.A case when boys and girls successfully
completed exercises, they got a congratulation and
acknowledgment from the teacher. As students were
B. Use of Blockly completing exercises, they were ordered in a way that
Blockly [5] is an open source visual programming challenges had an increasing difficulty.
language in which programs are built using instructions as if
they were puzzle pieces. It is similar to Scratch because it also
focuses on using blocks, as it shown in Figure 1. C. Educational videogame use
Develop Learning is the proposed videogame designed
and developed to satisfy the needs of students who want to
learn programming. Figure 2 shows an example of a
screenshot of the videogame.
Fig. 3. Input/output level (source: own elaboration)
For each minigame, the interface is the same: the console
Fig. 2. Develop Learning screenshot (source: own elaboration) with the code is in the upper right corner and, if there is an
explanation, it would be located as a text box at the bottom. In
When students were asked if they wanted to have help in boss levels, the text box with explanations and dialogs is in the
the system, most answers told that they wanted to have an lower left corner to leave room to the text area for writing
animal pet. This is why in the videogame the user represented code. Every time a minigame is completed, stars get coloured
by the character (4) comes along with a dog as a pet named as part of the gamified approach to rewards.
Binary (2) which guides them through challenges that has to
overcome through pseudocode programming. In the first level minigames are focused on input/output
instructions. In description minigames, the player will have to
The pet (2) shows texts (1) to students so they do not have read closely descriptions in the console in the upper right
a blank canvas as it happens in Scratch or Blockly, which both corner and introduce in the well the corresponding word.
of them, despite having tutorials, they do not have accurate
instructions about what to do. In easier levels of the If they succeed, the block will stay in the well. The player
videogame, the own videogame shows the code (3), while in will have to do this task five times in total. If they chose a
harder levels the difficulty increases and students have to write wrong block, this and every block inside the well will be
the code to overcome the challenges that are introduced thrown (as in a parabola to avoid coming back to the hole) and
through the different worlds where they are moving. they will have to start again.
When application boots, the student will find a main menu This is based on that, when starting a learning process,
consisting of: attention should be paid to concepts that are being studied.
One way to achieve this is to describe those words that have
Play menu, where they can access the tutorial and different meaning in the current context to understand further
different worlds and levels. explanations and teachings.
Settings menu, where they can change interface In the choosing minigame, the player must discern the
colours in minigames. program output, falling through a hole between three possible
Help menu, where they can check concepts in a ones. If they fail, they will come back to the beginning of that
comprehensive way with examples. This menu can floor. If they succeed, they will go to next floor, until they
also be accessed during minigames. reach the end of the level. The intention is to improve abstract
thinking, to understand possible environments and step ahead
Exit button to shut down the application. of solutions to take apart knowledge from context, which
means, not to memorize exercises.
The videogame interface was made in a way that it could
be used without mouse and keyboard at the same time. In other In the reordering minigame, the player will have to place
words, when the user interacts with menus, they do not need blocks on stands which match with the position shown in the
to use the keyboard and when they are in a minigame, they do console. The order of the console and stands match with
not need to use the mouse. They game also does not require occidental reading order: the console goes from top to bottom
internet connection. These choices were made because not all and stands go from left to right. Likewise, each block has the
schools have a good internet connection, and also, laptops are same colour as the corresponding space to arrange in the
usually used, so using simultaneously mouse and keyboard console.
could get tedious.
The user should look at the console on the upper right
For each main concept to teach, there is a world: I/O, corner and at the colour of the text that they should order,
conditionals and loops. All worlds shared the same structure: because they match with the colour blocks and stands on the
four minigames (descriptions, choosing, reorder and fill in the scene. From left to right, they should place the block in their
gaps), a review level and a boss as a final challenge as it shown equivalent position on the console, from top to bottom. If they
in Figure 3 and as it was requested by school students as the are sure about the result, they should press ‘F’ key near the
users following a User Centered Design [10]. button at the back of the level to check it. If they fail, blocks
will disarrange.
An important skill to solve problems is the ability to B. Procedure
organize elements that compose them. As in mathematics the During the research, students were allocated in three
first thing that is tasked in an exercise is to group known data groups: students using Blockly + videogame, students using
or in morphosyntactic analysis to locate subject and predicate Blockly and students taught by the teacher.
first, in programming it should be logically structured with
variables at the start to use them in later instructions. All groups followed a gamified approach. Since the
videogame was in development during these classes were
In fill in the gaps minigame, the player should enter the being taught, first sessions were covered always by Blockly
blocks in the stablished order. If they are right, they will light (except for the group taught by the teacher, which only used
up in green, otherwise in red. This tries to emulate usual blackboard, chalk, paper and pen) and it was since January
exercises, made to learn a language, filling empty spaces with when videogame could also be used for the Blockly +
a word from an array so the sentence makes sense. This videogame group.
minigame seeks to complement the previous ones, because at
this point, the user should understand the structure and Every group made a programming pre-test (October 2019)
instructions purposes. to check initial concepts that could have been obtained
externally, and also to check how old students were and what
In the review minigame, the player will go through the devices they usually use. For resolving this test, it was
four previous levels in order and in a reduced way. In other required to have knowledge about the following concepts:
words, they should complete description, choosing, reordering
and fill in the gaps minigames to succeed. Implementation of an output instruction.
In this level, every previous minigame will appear in Implementation of an input instruction and an output
reduced versions, to build on what has been learnt and to get instruction.
ready for the final level against the boss. It is done to be similar
as the previous preparation for an exam, to remember what Implementation of output instructions specified by
they have learned and to face the test with fresh knowledge. conditional blocks.
In the boss minigame, the player should pay attention to Implementation of an infinite loop, with output
the helper dog Binary indications, and the boss, to manually instructions.
write code to advance. If the player makes a mistake, a basic This test was presented again to students after four
hint will be offered, a guide of what is required. If they make sessions (December 2019) to check their progress until that
another mistake, an explicit hint will be offered. Another date, reviewing differences between groups.
mistake, the player should start again the level.
These sessions, in the three groups, consisted in lessons
In these levels, the player should write, in the designated about the following basic programming concepts: variable,
area, instructions to complete the needed program, when they memory, instruction, sequence and program. Groups also
are instructed to until the end of the level. Throughout this worked in exercises, with previously mentioned resources,
level, if the player fails a hint will be offered to know what requesting to introduce the input and output flow of a program,
they should write. If they fail again, another explicit hint will with exampled based on natural language that allowed
be offered. At third fail, they will restart the level. students to associate familiar concepts with the ones that were
This minigame was inspired by exams and final being presented to them.
knowledge tests to put the student in a light pressure to address Class dynamic was structured always in the same way: it
the situation in a playful way. This tries to fulfil the need of was started with a recap of previously explained teachings,
concrete objectives and challenges to get good results with after that, a new definition was introduced, and then students
videogames [7,8]. had to do a new practical exercise to solidify acquired
concepts, solving any doubts that could be asked.
The same test was presented again to students in February
III. EXPERIMENT
2020, just before the lockdown due to COVID-19, which
A. Sample disallowed to continue with the investigation, since every on-
100 Primary Education students from 10 to 12 years old site class in Spain was cancelled. The goal was to check the
has participated in the experiment. 46% of them are boys and evolution in grades of students from each group to evaluate
54% are girls, from two public schools from Madrid. the gamified approach and if there were any differences
between boys and girls.
94% of students answered the user profile survey, used as
reference for designing and developing the gamified system.
In this user profile survey, there were questions about how C. Results
familiar they were with technology and videogames, their In the first place, a descriptive study of data is made, which
personal preferences, how they handled challenges and their shows grades obtained in the test made in different dates:
willingness to programming. October 2019, December 2019 and February 2020.
The goal of these questions was to establish how to Figure 4 shows box plots regarding the punctuation
approach the design of help systems, menu navigation, how variable, separate by the different proposals. Table II sums up
long where game sessions and what goals had to be the numerical results. This table does not show the median,
accomplished. Another goal for these questions was to since its value its always 0.00. As can be seen, in October 2019
establish the structure and dynamic for the programming students did not know how to correctly answer any question.
classes since these concepts are new for these students.
Subsequently, in December 2019, student groups that used October and February, something that was already guessed in
Blockly and Blockly with Develop Learning showed a similar the previous descriptive study.
behaviour. Worst average results were obtained from control
group.
TABLA III. ANOVA OF TWO FACTORS WITH INTERACTION
Sum of gl F Sig.
squares
Month 5.94 2 26.22 0.00
Group 0.08 2 0.38 0.68
Interaction 1.66 4 3.67 0.06
Fig. 4. Boxplots of the scores per methodology
TABLE II. AVERAGE AND STANDARD DEVIATION OBTAINED FROM STUDENTS’
SCORES IN THE TESTS
n=100 December February
x̄ sd x̄ sd
Control 0.18 0.26 0.51 0.46
Fig. 5. Marginal averages of the scores obtained
Blockly 0.35 0.46 0.19 0.27
Blockly + 0.32 0.43 0.30 0.45
Video- Furthermore, this significative interaction shows that
game depending on the month, the efficiency of each group has
behaved differently. Thus, considering only December data,
there is not a meaningful difference between groups, but a
It should be mentioned that the three distributions are difference in February can be noticed, with control group
strongly asymmetrical to the right, which means that there is being the best positioned, followed by the one with Blockly
a greater clustering of students with low grades in every case. and Develop Learning and in the last place the one with
The median in the three cases is 0, but the average is higher Blockly. Figure 5 shows this fact.
due to this asymmetry.
When the study is made splitting between boys and girls,
However, in February 2020, the control group’s data it doesn’t show meaningful differences between groups. In
distribution becomes symmetrical to the left, which means October 2019 test case, both boys and girls got an average
that there is a high clustering of high grades over low grades. score of 0 because they didn’t have any knowledge about
Therefore, even if there are a lot of atypical data, median programming. In December 2019, both girls and boy average
shows that this control group is the one that got better results. score was 0,28 and in February 2020, average score for boys
There is a greater scatter in data from Blockly and videogame was 0,31 and for girls 0,27.
groups.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
Related to meaningful differences that could be between
different groups, and on the basis of a scenario where there are Gamified approach for programming teaching in Primary
not any previous learning from students as can be seen in their Education has significantly improved the learning profit both
grades, a process to check if there are differences between from students taught by the teacher (unplugged approach) and
groups is started. from the ones with Blockly and the videogame. This validates
the importance of teaching using playful resources with
For that purpose, a two factors with interaction Anova has increasing difficulty challenges.
been performed, where one factor is the month when the test
was performed and the other one is the group (teacher, Answering the research question about what differences
Blockly, Blockly + videogame), and the obtained grade as the exist between results from different groups, against expected,
answer variable. Table III shows the obtained results. better results are obtained by students from the group with
teacher, without Blockly and the videogame.
It can be seen that there are no isolated meaningful
evidence between groups, but there are in months. A more Answering the research question about what differences
detailed analysis of this result is found in a post-hoc analysis. exist between results from boys and girls, there are not
This analysis shows that the meaningful difference between meaningful differences between groups. This means that both
grades is found related to October, in other words, there are no girls and boys can learn programming using gamified
meaningful differences between December and February approach. This result is very important, especially for girls
grades, but between October and December and between from 10 to 12 years old who could think, based on social
stereotypes, that they couldn’t enjoy videogames or that they http://csta.acm.org/Curriculum/sub/CurrFiles/CS_K8_Building_a_Fo
couldn’t be able to reach the same performance as their male undation.pdf.
classmates. [2] J.M. Wing. “Computational thinking”. Communications of the ACM,
49(3), pp. 33–35, 2006.
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more time when in-site classes can be resumed if COVID-19 digital achievements as a gamification element on motivation and
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166, 2019.
to the study, comparing obtained results in a larger age range,
[4] D. Pérez-Marín, R. Hijón-Neira, M. Martín-Lope. “A Methodology
from 10 to 15 years old, to identify if there are meaningful Proposal based on Metaphors to teach Programming to children”.
differences and interactions between gamified resources, age Revista: IEEE Revista Iberoamericana de Tecnologías del Aprendizaje,
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[5] Blockly, https://blockly.games/?lang=es (fecha última visita: 06/2020)
[6] C. González-González, F. Blanco-Izquierdo. “Designing social
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 58, Issue 1, pp 250-262, 2012.
Research funded by the TIN 2015-66731-C2-1-R project [7] K. Øygardslia, P. Aarsand. “Move over, I will find Jerusalem”:
and the Madrid Regional Government, through the e-Madrid- Artifacts in game design in classrooms”. Learning, Culture and Social
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also co-financed by the Structural Funds (FSE and FEDER). [8] M.J. Dondlinger. “Educational video game design: A review of the
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for their collaboration.
[9] A. Bacelo-Polo, R. Hijón-Neira, D. Pérez-Marín. Piensa y programa
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