Investigating the Perceived Player Experience and Short-term Learning of the Text-based Java Programming Serious Game “Rise of the Java Emperor”

Dimitrios Tsiotras,Stelios Xinogalos

doi:10.15388/infedu.2021.08

Abstract

There has been an active movement towards fun learning, using games in education. This article introduces the text-based serious game “Rise of the Java Emperor” that aims to support students in learning basic object-oriented programming concepts using Java. Information concerning the analysis, the design and the pilot evaluation of the game is presented. Thirty-three undergraduate and postgraduate students of an Applied Informatics Department voluntarily played and answered a questionnaire based on the MEEGA+ model, in order to investigate the perceived player experience and short-term learning as well as the acceptance of a text-based programming game by students. The results of the evaluation show that text based games can be both fun and instructional for the field of computer programming. An important issue that requires further research is how this or other programming games can be successfully combined with traditional teaching methods for enhancing the learning of programming.

Highlights

Half a century after their appearance, videogames have become an integral part of the daily lives of millions of people around the world
The majority of the participants consider that this game is ideal for learning the basic concepts of the programming language Java
They gave mixed answers as to whether such ways of learning programming are more efficient than the traditional ones

Summary

Introduction

Half a century after their appearance, videogames have become an integral part of the daily lives of millions of people around the world. They provide feedback either from the game play itself or from interacting with other players. A variety of serious games for supporting the teaching of programming languages has been developed Some of these games aim to teach programming concepts to primary school students, (Giannakoulas and Xinogalos, 2018), while others aim Investigating the Perceived Player Experience and Short-term Learning. These games have been developed by the Educational Technology Research Group at the University of Macedonia with the support of undergraduate and postgraduate stu- Serious game.

Methods

Results

Conclusion