Programming, PWNed: using digital game development to enhance learners' competency and self-efficacy in a high school computing science course

Authors:
Katie Seaborn;Magy Seif El-Nasr;David Milam;Darren Yung
Affiliations:
York University, Toronto, ON, Canada;Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA;Simon Fraser University, Surrey, BC, Canada;Frank Hurt Secondary, Surrey, BC, Canada
Venue:
Proceedings of the 43rd ACM technical symposium on Computer Science Education
Year:
2012

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Abstract

Games are an important part of popular culture and have successfully engaged audiences from different age groups [8]. This has caused many educators to start thinking of different ways to infuse game-based techniques (playing or construction) to enhance education. Over the past five years, there has been several research efforts on curriculum development and the evaluation of game construction and playing methods to promote STEM (Science Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) concepts to middle and high school students. In this paper, we report on a new study following the lead of previous efforts. In particular, we were granted a block within Frank Hurt High School by the Surrey school district for which to develop a game construction-based curriculum as a basis for computer science education within the school, replacing a traditional computer science class. From February till June 2011 students were taught elementary programming using GameMaker, a digital game development tool. In addition to collecting students' overall impressions, we also evaluated students' technical competency (using tests) and self-efficacy (using surveys) at the start and end of the semester. Our findings show that the curriculum had a positive, statistically significant effect on concept comprehension, which suggests that the curriculum was effective for understanding computer science and game design concepts. In this paper we present the course structure, methods, and evaluation as a contribution.