Abstract:

All engineering degrees of the University of Oviedo, and some related master’s degrees, include a first-year subject known as Computer Basics. The objective of this course is to introduce students to the world of Computer Science by teaching some basic notions, with an important emphasis on the Python programming language. In the 2018/2019 academic year, a team of professors launched an activity to strengthen the self-learning of Python: a programming Gymkhana in which students progressed as they solved different exercises. At the end of the activity, a ranking of students was elaborated based on the number of exercises solved and the number of attempts. Given that the participation in the activity was voluntary, it was rewarded with a maximum of an extra point in the final grade on the basis of the position of the student in the ranking.

Given the success of the first edition, this innovative experience was improved and carried out in the current academic year, 2019/2020. The renewed version of the programming Gymkhana incorporates a great variety of Python exercises, including not only the ones proposed originally, which were carefully reviewed, but also new ones. As a result, the number of exercises has been almost doubled, reaching more than 50, and they have been now distributed in four thematic blocks:
1) basic operators and variables,
2) logical operators and conditional structures,
3) loops, and
4) lists and strings.

Additionally, several critical aspects related to system privacy and security were fixed with two main objectives:
1) preventing attacks to the server, accessible from the Internet; and
2) preventing the fraudulent participation in the activity.

It is also worth mentioning that the programming Gymkhana has grown in terms of number of people and entities involved. More specifically, the teaching team was composed of eight professors who carried out the activity in three different schools, involving a total of 92 students who belonged to six different degrees related to Computer and IT Engineering, Industrial Engineering, and Mining Engineering.

The impact of this innovative activity was assessed using three different criteria. Firstly, the final grades of the students that participated in the Gymkhana were compared with those who did not. This quantitative comparison demonstrated the benefits of this experience in the programming skills of the participants, who achieved better results in their final grades, with a maximum increase of 3 points on a grading scale from 0 to 10. Secondly, the opinion of the students was taken into account by means of an anonymous survey. Their opinion with respect to the Gymkhana was very positive, mainly among those students who solved a greater amount of exercises. Finally, we evaluated the percentage of students who participated in the Gymkhana among all the students enrolled in the different degrees considered. It is worth noting the high participation ratio achieved despite the voluntariness of the activity, reaching a percentage over 68%.

Future work entails launching the experience in other subjects and/or universities, and developing a friendly web interface that facilitates the use of the Gymkhana, promoting greater participation, mainly among the students of non-computer-related degrees.

Keywords:

Gamification, Self-learning, Gymkhana, Programming.