3D visualization of software architectures
Communications of the ACM
Alice: lessons learned from building a 3D system for novices
Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Software Visualization in the Large
Computer
3D representations for software visualization
Proceedings of the 2003 ACM symposium on Software visualization
ATask Oriented View of Software Visualization
VISSOFT '02 Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Visualizing Software for Understanding and Analysis
Visualizing Software in Virtual Reality
IWPC '98 Proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Program Comprehension
Human Factors in Visualization Research
IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
Games for science and engineering education
Communications of the ACM - Creating a science of games
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A educational computer game, Conveyor, was designed and developed as part of an investigation into the use of games to teach software development at a tertiary level. The puzzle game requires players to sort random input objects of particular shapes and colours into the correct outputs by programming the solution. An integrated analytics system collects data about how players engage with the game, such as the time taken and number of reattempts at each level. The game was tested on a group of 39 electrical engineering and game design students, many of whom had not programmed before. 80% of participants completed all 9 levels of the game. The minimum average time for a level was around 20 seconds with an average of 2 attempts, whilst the most difficult level took an average of 7 minutes over 3 attempts to complete. These results indicate that the game provided a good, but not overwhelming, challenge for the desired audience. A survey was used to collect qualitative feedback from the audience. The game was judged to be both fun and rewarding, but is too instructive and the user interface was deemed confusing. Further work conducted includes a simple test before and after the game is played, to judge the effect of the game on students' understanding.