Does Gamification Make a Difference in Programming Education? Evaluating FGPE-Supported Learning Outcomes

While gamification has been paired with computer programming education on numerous occasions, most of the scientific reports covering the evaluation of its learning outcomes pertain to single-case specialized gamification applications with none or little chance of reuse in other institutions and cou...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Jakub Swacha, Justyna Szydłowska
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2023-09-01
Series:Education Sciences
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/13/10/984
Description
Summary:While gamification has been paired with computer programming education on numerous occasions, most of the scientific reports covering the evaluation of its learning outcomes pertain to single-case specialized gamification applications with none or little chance of reuse in other institutions and courses; thus, they offer only limited replicability and comparability of results. In this work, we aim to address this gap by investigating the learning outcomes of a programming course based on the FGPE (Framework for Gamified Programming Education) platform, an open-source, fully configurable gamification platform developed specifically to support teaching and learning computer programming that can be used by any institution to support any programming-related course. This is, to the best of our knowledge, the very first study evaluating the learning outcomes of FGPE-supported programming education. Moreover, we address the question of whether students learning with gamified platforms limited to programming practice can benefit from additionally using non-gamified MOOCs by comparing the results attained in three groups differing in the choice of learning support tools (FGPE and MOOC vs. FGPE only vs. MOOC only).
ISSN:2227-7102