Using Gamification for Supporting an Introductory Programming Course. The Case of ClassCraft in a Secondary Education Classroom

In the book Interactivity, Game Creation, Design, Learning, and Innovation, Stamatios Papadakis and Michail Kalogiannakis (2017) explore the effects of Classcraft on student performance and engagement. While the increase in student performance was not statistically significant, the improvements in student engagement were significant. Papadakis and Kalogiannakis referenced Bond who defines gamification as the application of game elements to non-game contexts (Bond, 2015). A random selection of 30 high school students were randomly assigned to two groups. One group learned computer programming with Classcraft and the control group learned programming from traditional teaching methods. The teacher collected data about the accuracy and complexity of student codes, final exam scores, and a questionnaire about students’ attitudes towards programming. The accuracy and complexity of student codes in the Classcraft group were higher, but not enough to be statistically significant. The mea for the first group was 66.60 with a 8.84 standard deviation. The control group earned a mean score of 64.87 and a standard deviation of 9.96. The final online exam gleaned similar results. The experimental group had a mean score of 74.60 and a 7.21 standard deviation. The control group had a 73.47 average score with a 8.11 standard deviation. Again, the increases were not statistically significant. Finally, the questionnaire showed that there was a major difference between the two groups. The instructor calculated a number to represent student attitudes towards programming. The Classcraft group reported an average positive attitude towards programming of 92.27% with a 2.09 standard deviation. Meanwhile, the control group responded with 72.87% positive attitudes and a 9.43 standard deviation (Papadakis & Kalogiannakis, 2017).

References

Bond, L.: Mathimagicians Quest: Applying Game Design Concepts to Education to Increase School Engagement for Students with Emotional and Behavioral Disabilities (Doctoral dissertation). University of Washington (2015)

Papadakis, S., & Kalogiannakis, M. (2017). Using gamification for supporting an introductory programming course. the case of classcraft in a secondary education classroom. In Interactivity, Game Creation, Design, Learning, and Innovation(pp. 366-375). Springer, Cham.