Andrew Hicks
ABSTRACT
Participation, retention, and overall performance in introductory CS students could be improved by removing or reducing some of the pitfalls along these students' paths. In introductory coursework, there is little or no need for collaboration, which may discourage socially-oriented students. Furthermore, the dual challenge of learning a programming language and covering more abstract, conceptual concepts may discourage students with little prior experience, and frustrate those who are already capable programmers. To remedy this, we will investigate social mechanics for learning games. We hypothesize that students will develop the skills necessary to succeed in the game more readily if friends are present to motivate and challenge them. We plan to explore effective social mechanics, and create efficient methodologies for their implementation and development. We believe that social gaming has the potential to revolutionize the way students learn, and that through our research, we will discover the most effective ways to bring students together and motivate creativity, innovation, and learning using social gaming.
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Digital Library
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Index Terms
- Towards social gaming methods for improving game-based computer science education
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