Abstract:

Over recent years, increased attention has been paid to the use of computer games in education. What creates this vast space for exploration is the game’s unique potential for engagement. Young people invest countless hours into playing, which in itself poses great research opportunities. The trend in education, however, is to move pupils from the consumer’s role to the producer’s, to hone skills needed for the 21st century. Applying this to the context of games, we can find various approaches incorporating game-making and creation of personal projects into the learning process. To achieve this, various didactic environments and microworlds have been developed and their use is still not fully explored. Furthermore, we can see an increase in learner-centred tendencies, as constructionism recognises and we agree, that the closer the learning experience is to the real-world experience, the better context for learning it creates.

This paper describes the results of the survey of an experimental method, attempting to respond to both tendencies. The foundation of the method is to introduce primary school pupils to programming by teaching them to construct simple computer games in an authentic game-making software, Construct 2. To ensure the individual experience for learners, an online programming course was designed, containing detailed tutorials and additional materials to help learners facilitate the game-making process and challenge them to continue after completing the course, all available on a website. When designing the course, three criteria were intended for assessment: the motivational effect of the course, the effectiveness of the course and the course’s design for individual learning. These results of the survey are presented in the paper together with its implications for distance learning as well as ideas for future research into this topic.

Keywords:

Teaching programming, game construction, introduction to programming, games in education.