On blooming first year programming, and its blooming assessment
ACSE '00 Proceedings of the Australasian conference on Computing education
Contributing to success in an introductory computer science course: a study of twelve factors
Proceedings of the thirty-second SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer Science Education
What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy
Computers in Entertainment (CIE) - Theoretical and Practical Computer Applications in Entertainment
Most difficult topics in CS1: results of an online survey of educators
ACM SIGCSE Bulletin
Game2Learn: building CS1 learning games for retention
Proceedings of the 12th annual SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
Wu's castle: teaching arrays and loops in a game
Proceedings of the 13th annual conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
Evaluation of a game-based lab assignment
Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Foundations of Digital Games
Level up: a frame work for the design and evaluation of educational games
Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Foundations of Digital Games
Experimental evaluation of teaching recursion in a video game
Proceedings of the 2009 ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Video Games
Game-themed programming assignments for faculty: a case study
Proceedings of the 41st ACM technical symposium on Computer science education
Lessons from a course on serious games research and prototyping
Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games
Towards social gaming methods for improving game-based computer science education
Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games
A web-based generation and delivery system for active code reading
Proceedings of the 42nd ACM technical symposium on Computer science education
Proceedings of the 16th annual joint conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
Secret ninja testing with HALO software engineering
Proceedings of the 4th international workshop on Social software engineering
BeadLoom Game: adding competitive, user generated, and social features to increase motivation
Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Foundations of Digital Games
Serious game for introductory programming
SGDA'11 Proceedings of the Second international conference on Serious Games Development and Applications
Creation, evaluation, and presentation of user-generated content in community game-based tutors
Proceedings of the International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games
Board game strategies in introductory computer science
Proceeding of the 44th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education
A guideline for game development-based learning: a literature review
International Journal of Computer Games Technology
The effect of uncertainty on learning in game-like environments
Computers & Education
Towards a new massive multiplayer online role playing game for introductory programming
Proceedings of the 6th Balkan Conference in Informatics
In-game assessments increase novice programmers' engagement and level completion speed
Proceedings of the ninth annual international ACM conference on International computing education research
Learning and practicing decision structures in a game
Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges
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We are developing games to increase student learning and attitudes in introductory CS courses. Wu's Castle is a game where students program changes in loops and arrays in an interactive, visual way. The game provides immediate feedback and helps students visualize code execution in a safe environment. We compared the game to a traditional programming assignment in an introductory CS course. In our study, half of the students were randomly selected to play the learning game first and half to write a program first. Our results show that students who play our learning game first outperform those who write a program before playing the game. Students in the game-first group felt they spent less time on the assignments, and all students preferred the learning game over the program. These results suggest that games like Wu's Castle can help prepare students to create deeper, more robust understanding of computing concepts while improving their perceptions of computing homework assignments.