Abstract
E-learning tools are gaining increasing relevance as facilitators in the task of learning how to program. This is mainly a result of the pandemic situation and consequent lockdown in several countries, which forced distance learning. Instant and relevant feedback to students, particularly if coupled with gamification, plays a pivotal role in this process and has already been demonstrated as an effective solution in this regard. However, teachers still struggle with the lack of tools that can adequately support the creation and management of online gamified programming courses. Until now, there was no software platform that would be simultaneously open-source and general-purpose (i.e., not integrated with a specific course on a specific programming language) while featuring a meaningful selection of gamification components. Such a solution has been developed as a part of the Framework for Gamified Programming Education (FGPE) project. In this paper, we present its two front-end components: FGPE AuthorKit and FGPE PLE, explain how they can be used by teachers to prepare and manage gamified programming courses, and report the results of the usability evaluation by the teachers using the platform in their classes.
Highlights
There is a major concern among educational researchers with the disengagement of the students from the learning activities, which frequently leads to academic failure and, lastly, dropout
We describe two key software components of the platform—FGPE AuthorKit and FGPE Programming Learning Environment (PLE)—and explain how these can be used by teachers to prepare and manage gamified programming courses
Submissions, triggering gamification rules, and updating the game state, in this paper, we focus on the two remaining key elements of the ecosystem: FGPE AuthorKit and FGPE
Summary
There is a major concern among educational researchers with the disengagement of the students from the learning activities, which frequently leads to academic failure and, lastly, dropout. This issue is even more noticeable in distance learning [1], which became the default way of learning in many countries in times of the current pandemic. Feedback is considered as one of the three high-level concepts (together with competition and cooperation) essential for gamification [3]; even apart from gamification, it has been considered for a long time as an important element of successful knowledge and skill acquisition [4,5]. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, (1) it remains a closed prototype (source code not available and access to a live deployment is only granted by request), (2) formats for sharing and reusing exercise packages and gamification layers are not public (if they exist), and (3) supported gamification elements could be enriched (i.e., more than points, badges, leaderboards, levels, and virtual currency)
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