Towards a Framework for Adaptive Gameplay in Serious Games that Teach Programming: Association Between Computational Thinking and Cognitive Style

Abstract

Learning basic programming principles is the main process to acquire computational thinking skills, which comprise an essential capability for education worldwide. The game-based learning approach is a very promising learning strategy towards that direction. Digital games help learners become active and engaging in the acquisition of knowledge. Though, the learning process is not always clear through serious games that teach programming. Personality characteristics like cognitive style, seem to affect how efficiently and effectively learners perceive the knowledge. Cognitive style deals with the way learners perceive information and is a significant feature in improving programming learning. Thus, in order learners to achieve better performances through serious games that teach programming concepts, we need to investigate how cognitive style can be incorporated into the design of game-based learning environments. This article proposes a framework for adaptive gameplay that can support and encourage researchers and game designers to properly identify the concept of cognitive style when designing game-based learning environments for programming learning. The framework models an ontology that searches personality traits and enables personalised decision-making learning activities.