Experimental evaluation of teaching recursion in a video game

Authors:
Amanda Chaffin;Katelyn Doran;Drew Hicks;Tiffany Barnes
Affiliations:
University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC;University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC;University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC;University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC
Venue:
Proceedings of the 2009 ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Video Games
Year:
2009

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Abstract

We present EleMental: The Recurrence, a novel game that provides computer science students the opportunity to write code and perform interactive visualizations to learn about recursion through depth-first search of a binary tree. We designed the game to facilitate maximum transfer of learning to writing real programs, while also providing for interactive visualizations. We conducted a study with computer science majors to measure the impact of the game on learning and on attitudes toward educational games. Our results demonstrate the enthusiasm students have for learning games and provide insight into how such games should be constructed.