Abstract:

For some years now many teachers around the world have explored programming with their pupils in K-9 education. Research has shown that educational games of different kinds are often utilized by teachers as a mean for teaching programming and developing computational thinking among pupils. However, teaching and learning programming and computational thinking trough educational games is associated with a number of challenges. One of those challenges are related to that teachers are presented with an ever increasing amount of educational games and not supported with tools that, one the one hand, can help them evaluate the didactical affordances and potentials of specific games so they can select curriculum appropriate games, and on the other hand, that can help them design and orchestrate game-based learning activities. It is against such a background this paper presents a framework for the evaluation and orchestration of game-based learning activities that fosters computational thinking. The framework consists of two dimensions, namely game mechanics and learning mechanics. These two dimensions consists of a number of aspects that teachers and researchers can take into account in order to evaluate and design activities, and to reap the benefits of the didactical affordances of the games and the available scaffolding resources built inside games and available outside of them.

Keywords:

Programming education, Game-based learning, Educational games, Learning games, K-9 education.