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Towards a new massive multiplayer online role playing game for introductory programming

Published: 19 September 2013 Publication History

Abstract

Successful computer programming education is facing significant problems even nowadays for both students and teachers. To this end, the specificities of those difficulties and the corresponding causes continue to be an ongoing topic of research. According to relevant case studies, these relate to the complex concepts of computer programming as well as the lack of motivation by students to achieve the given goals. On the other hand, the emerging field of Games Based Learning is gradually delivering games that are applied in a series of educational contexts. In this paper, we aim to initially investigate the educational games developed for and used in the computer programming domain and review to which level they address the aforementioned difficulties. Related work includes a number of games that have been developed towards this goal. However, even though they seem promising examples, they lack features that would allow them to successfully underpin computer programming learning by facing the majority of the identified problems. To this end, we propose a new, advanced Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) that includes the facilitating and positive features identified in existing solutions and incorporates missing elements that will bring forth a new generation of educational games for introductory computer programming.

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  • (2019)Using Game Development to Teach ProgrammingHandbook of Research on Immersive Digital Games in Educational Environments10.4018/978-1-5225-5790-6.ch016(450-485)Online publication date: 2019
  • (2017)CMX: The Effects of an Educational MMORPG on Learning and Teaching Computer ProgrammingIEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies10.1109/TLT.2016.255666610:2(219-235)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2017
  • (2015)Harnessing and Evaluating Open Sim for the Implementation of an Inquiry-Based Collaborative Learning (Ib[C]L) Script in Computer ScienceOpen Source Technology10.4018/978-1-4666-7230-7.ch059(1223-1246)Online publication date: 2015
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      cover image ACM Other conferences
      BCI '13: Proceedings of the 6th Balkan Conference in Informatics
      September 2013
      293 pages
      ISBN:9781450318518
      DOI:10.1145/2490257
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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      • University of Macedonia
      • Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
      • The University of Sheffield: The University of Sheffield
      • Greek Com Soc: Greek Computer Society
      • SEERC: South-East European Research Centre
      • Alexander TEI of Thessaloniki

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      Association for Computing Machinery

      New York, NY, United States

      Publication History

      Published: 19 September 2013

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      Author Tags

      1. educational games
      2. introductory programming
      3. massive multiplayer online role playing game

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      BCI '13
      Sponsor:
      • The University of Sheffield
      • Greek Com Soc
      • SEERC
      BCI '13: Balkan Conference in Informatics
      September 19 - 21, 2013
      Thessaloniki, Greece

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      Cited By

      View all
      • (2019)Using Game Development to Teach ProgrammingHandbook of Research on Immersive Digital Games in Educational Environments10.4018/978-1-5225-5790-6.ch016(450-485)Online publication date: 2019
      • (2017)CMX: The Effects of an Educational MMORPG on Learning and Teaching Computer ProgrammingIEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies10.1109/TLT.2016.255666610:2(219-235)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2017
      • (2015)Harnessing and Evaluating Open Sim for the Implementation of an Inquiry-Based Collaborative Learning (Ib[C]L) Script in Computer ScienceOpen Source Technology10.4018/978-1-4666-7230-7.ch059(1223-1246)Online publication date: 2015
      • (2015)Evaluation of the user experience and intrinsic motivation with educational and mainstream digital gamesProceedings of the Latin American Conference on Human Computer Interaction10.1145/2824893.2824904(1-7)Online publication date: 18-Nov-2015
      • (2015)Microworlds, Games and CollaborationProceedings of the 7th Balkan Conference on Informatics Conference10.1145/2801081.2801094(1-8)Online publication date: 2-Sep-2015
      • (2015)Creativity in digital pedagogy and game-based learning techniques; theoretical aspects, techniques and case studies2015 6th International Conference on Information, Intelligence, Systems and Applications (IISA)10.1109/IISA.2015.7387963(1-6)Online publication date: Jul-2015
      • (2014)A review of games designed to improve introductory computer programming competencies2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE) Proceedings10.1109/FIE.2014.7044114(1-7)Online publication date: Oct-2014
      • (2013)Harnessing and Evaluating Open Sim for the Implementation of an Inquiry-Based Collaborative Learning (Ib[C]L) Script in Computer ScienceInternational Journal of Virtual Communities and Social Networking10.4018/ijvcsn.20131001015:4(1-23)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2013

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