Serious Game for Introductory Programming

Abstract

For beginners in computer programming, the learning curve can be in many cases quite steep, especially if it is their first contact with this area. Plus, the traditional learning methodologies are usually based on doing countless exercises that aim to cover many areas, but are often disconnected from each other and can become tiresome, as they offer little immediate rewards to the student. Nowadays serious games technology offers tools that may have potential to help computer programming students to become more engaged on their learning through a 'learn while having fun' approach. This paper aims to generally describe our approach on the creation of a platform for deploying serious computer games for the teaching of any computer programming language. We will begin by describing the game mechanics, followed by the general system architecture and its data model, finalizing with a small conclusion.