Learning Analytics: Game-based Learning for Programming Course in Higher Education

Abstract

Abstract The traditional classroom teaching is monotonous based teaching techniques and it lacks interaction and students lose the curiosity to understand the purpose of studying the course. The learners anticipate new teaching techniques, digital assignment, and challenging assessment patterns. In higher education, various new teaching-learning process is introduced to engage the learners with motivations and kindle the practice of self-learning thereby paying the way for acquisition of better competency skills and knowledge. With the various innovations in ICT for higher-education, game based learning is one of the innovative teaching-learning strategies which gained interest in various universities. The paradigm shift of ICT is tangled with various teaching methodologies in-order to match the 21st- century learners. The game based learning for programming course stimulates the curiosity to learn and understand the programming concepts in a better way. It also suits all the types of learners in the classroom especially the slow learners. The purpose of choosing gaming as a teaching aid, the learners are so much interested and addicted to any form of gaming. Using this as opportunity and interest in higher education, the programming courses will surely yield better performances and motivate the learners for lifelong learning skills. This ongoing project is focused on developing game-based learning for programming courses for first-year undergraduate students of our university. All the first-year students of various departments undergo a Python programming language course during the first semester. This programming course delivers conventional classroom teaching with chalk/talk or powerpoint presentation equipped with a practical session for all the students in the laboratory. It is also embedded with game-based learning for few sessions. The topics from programming courses are developed as gaming platforms with stages and characters. This aids the students to acquire knowledge about a topic while playing games and interact with the gaming console. The gaming technology encourages the students to enhance their cognitive skills with coding and debugging skills, thereby enhancing their competency skills. The gaming technology binds the learners with motivation to enrich the performances and achieve the course learning outcome for the Python programming course. This gaming environment includes various levels with time durations and the scores acquired based on the completion of stages. The gaming phase includes activities like complete the code, drag and drop, debugging and guess the output. The learner’s scores are evaluated using rubrics metrics which are defined by the course instructors based on the course objectives. The total scores acquired from all the stages are analyzed using learning analytics. The Artificial Neural network, regression techniques are used to measure the learner’s performances and it is compared with the traditional teaching assessment process. This comparative study helps the academic curriculum to understand the impact of game-based learning for the Python course and the determination of the students to undergo such innovative teaching style in the classroom.