Abstract:

The pervasiveness of information and communication technologies in everyday life imposes the need for everyone to be digitally proficient. Computational thinking and learning to code are necessary 21st century skills that can drastically influence future labor market. It is incomprehensible to plan the education of the students at any level without fundamental skills acquired in the basic education. Carefully planned educational approaches must be used in order to develop computational thinking skills at primary school level. One possible approach is to use game based learning. Game based learning combined with flipped classroom and collaborative team work can utilize students’ energy and enthusiasm in playing games in achieving educational goals. The game based approach is also very useful to develop different level of digital competences focusing on a technology as a tool for achieving certain goal.

Scottie Go! is an interactive puzzle-based mobile game which aims to involve primary school children in coding and programming using approach similar to popular block based coding approaches such as Scratch coding environment. The coding is very similar to making the puzzle, where each part of the puzzle is one coding instruction. The “compiling” of code is done using mobile app camera-based interface that is very popular among students. This simple and tactile approach makes easier for young learners to deal with abstract coding concepts without depending on technology at one side, and developing sophisticated digital competences (simplified augmented reality) at other side. The collaborative game approach was used in order to integrate less interested or talented students in achieving learning outcomes in a very natural way. By playing the game students have both fun and possibility to learn from the other in the flipped classroom manner.
 
Students from six different primary schools have used Scottie Go! as a tool for learning to code. In total, 120 students took part in the survey concerning their overall experience in using the game for development of computational skills. Information concerning students’ interest in the game, ease of use, students' quality of experience and correspondence to educational goals were obtained. Two exams have been carried out to evaluate pupils’ learning achievements and long term knowledge.

Survey results together with exams’ results indicate that the proposed approach has created collaborative, stimulating and motivational learning environments which lead to successful achieving of learning outcomes.

The detailed approach for matching the game play with educational goals, together with the proposed teaching methodology and results of the survey will be presented in the paper.

Keywords:

Game Based Learning, Learning to Code, Collaborative Learning, Flipped Classroom.