Improving Students' Motivation and Focus Through the Gamification in the Computer Science Peer Instruction Methodology (CSPI)

Abstract

The Peer Instruction (PI) is an active learning, student-centered approach designed to engage students through the administration of conceptual questions. On its turn, the CSPI is an adaptation of the PI to the computer science area, mainly Introductory Programming (CS1) courses. In this work, we present the initial assessment of the gamification adoption into the CSPI. Two CSPI/CS1 courses were administered, one without gamification (control experiment) and one with it. We identified that, although participants originally didn’t expect that gamification would affect their experience, results suggest that gamification positively impacts participants' motivation and focus. Future work involves the analysis of collaboration and interaction variables through learning analytics tools.