As computing becomes a mainstream discipline embedded in the school curriculum and acts as an enabler for an increasing range of academic disciplines in higher education, the literature on introductory programming is growing. Although there have been several reviews that focus on specific aspects of introductory programming, there has been no broad overview of the literature exploring recent trends across the breadth of introductory programming. This paper is the report of an ITiCSE working group that conducted a systematic review in order to gain an overview of the introductory programming literature. Partitioning the literature into papers addressing the student, teaching, the curriculum, and assessment, we explore trends, highlight advances in knowledge over the past 15 years, and indicate possible directions for future research.

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Introductory programming: a systematic literature review

Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)

Learning of programming and, more generally, of computer science concepts is now reaching the public at large. It is not only reserved for people who studied informatics (computer science) or programming anymore. Teaching programming to schoolchildren presents many challenges: the big diversity in ability and aptitude levels; the big amount of different tools; the time-consuming nature of programming; and of course the difficulty to motivate schoolchildren to keep them busy with hard work. There are various platforms that offer to learn coding and programming, in particular game-based platforms, which are more and more popular. These latter exploits of the gamification process focused on increase in motivation and engagement of the learners. This paper reviews the main kinds of online platforms to learn programming and more general computer science concepts, and illustrates the review with concrete platforms examples.

/pdf/learning-programming-through-games-and-contests-overview-5dyqgqpoyy.pdf

Learning Programming through Games and Contests: Overview, Characterisation and Discussion

Gamification is an innovative approach that aims to increase users' engagement and motivation and provide sustainable experiences. It has recently become widely known and is an approach that is bei...

A Systematic Review of Gamification Research: In Pursuit of Homo Ludens

In recent years, there has been a lot of attention given to the trend of including game elements into non-gaming facilities. The usage of gamification in education is a massive benefit for motivation, user interaction, and social effects. The gamified elements such as points, badge, feedbacks, level, rewards, challenges, etc. have been used in e-learning. A systematic review of gamification in online education has not been found when the relevant literature examined. Therefore, this study aims to research the current literature using gamification and online education and highlight the reported benefits and challenges of gamification applications in online education. The present research followed the literature review method. The current study employed a qualitative approach for collected data. Thus, the term "gamification" was used as the primary research keyword. The results show that gamification has increasingly been accepted as a useful learning tool to generate more engaging educational environments. Additionally, elements support and motivate students to participate in a gamification system. The study showed that the most common gamification elements used in e-learning and have a powerful effect on the students are points, leaderboards, badge, and level. This study is thought to contribute significantly to studies on the use of gamification applications in online education. It reinforces previous studies and identifies many useful study topics that can be explored to advance the field. From these results, suggestions on gamification applications in e-learning for further research are given.

Gamification Applications in E-learning: A Literature Review

The popularity of computer science education triggered a dramatic rise in the number of tertiary institutions offering computer science courses. Nevertheless, many employers complain that graduates do not have the required skills. Lately, the higher education sector has faced a continuous decrease in the number of students choosing to study computer science courses, and some of the reasons for this rejection are related to the difficulties in mastering computer science skills. As core subjects in a computer science major, programming language subjects play an important role in successful tertiary computer science education. The embedding of gamification in programming courses has been identified as a potential technique that could maximize student participation and have a positive impact on learning. This research aims to provide an overview of how the embedding of gamification in online collaborative learning can enhance participation among novice programming students. The main findings from this review include the identification of the important participation elements for programming students in the online collaborative learning environment, a list of game elements embedded in online collaborative learning to facilitate participation among programming students, and suggestions regarding suitable gamification approaches for programming courses.

Gamification in online collaborative learning for programming courses: A literature review

Gamification has the ability to stimulate creativity and active minds. In the process of learning programming, a passive learning style often leads to some level of student disengagement during class time. Retaining the engagement of motivated students does not present much of a problem. However, in the case of problematic students, sometimes an unpleasant experience they encountered during a previous programming class will lead to an unmotivated attitude in the next programming class. Thus, this paper aims to provide a way for institutions to help problematic students who may have difficulty in engaging with the programming subject. This paper presents an example of how the gamification elements with COI framework can help to reach out to timid students who have difficulties engaging with the programming subject. Mapping of top gamification elements will create interdependence among inquiries for better educational experience.

Attracting students' engagement in programming courses with gamification

Transforming the conventional ways of teaching programming is essential to help lecturer to retain student's engagement with the academic matter. One of the approach is to improve the conventional ways of teaching by activating the collaborative aspect among students through the support of discussion forum. However, some concerns growth regarding the participation from the student. The use of discussion forum sometimes is incapable to spark participation among students. Gamification has grown attention among researchers to be applied in engaging students in programming courses. Thus, this research hypothesis the embedding of gamification as one of an interesting solution to attract students' engagement through the support of discussion forum.

Shahdatunnaim Azmi

Papers

Gamification in online collaborative learning for programming courses: A literature review

Attracting students' engagement in programming courses with gamification

Promoting students' engagement in learning programming through gamification in peer-review discussion forum