ENGAGING STUDENTS IN COMPUTING USING GAMESALAD: A PILOT STUDY

Transcription

1 ENGAGING STUDENTS IN COMPUTING USING GAMESALAD: A PILOT STUDY Sonal Dekhane and Xin Xu School of Science and Technology Georgia Gwinnett College 1000 University Center Lane Lawrenceville, GA [email protected], [email protected] ABSTRACT GameSalad is a visual programming tool that can be used to develop computer games for various platforms including mobile devices such as ipad and iphone. To create an active and engaging learning environment, and to increase students interest in the computing field, we proposed and implemented mobile game development using GameSalad in a general education Information Technology (IT) course. Quizzes and surveys were used to measure student learning outcomes and attitudes towards computing. This paper discusses the results of this pilot study, which shows that student engagement was higher as compared to the traditional sections of the same course. Students also indicated high interest in computing, and formed a better understanding of IT. INTRODUCTION With the advancement of technology, computer hardware and software have become essential tools not only for science and engineering fields, but also for business and liberal arts disciplines. For example, in physiology, computers have been used to assist psychological assessment [5] and other tasks, in business world, e-commerce has become the norm, in biology, computer program has been developed to estimate gene genealogies [1], and the list goes on and on. To be successful in the academic study and future career, students need to be able to adapt to such a dynamic environment surrounded by new technologies, thus, basic computer literacy is not enough. Developing a deeper understanding about the computing field and being able to apply computing skills to manipulate / create digital graphics, animations and games has become increasingly important. Some people even argue that programming is the new literacy [10]. However, learning programming using a language such as Java or C++ has been proven to be not easy even for IT majors [3]. Taking into consideration the importance of IT fluency, the role of programming in it and the difficulty in learning programming, especially for non-majors the authors decided to use a visual programming tool, called GameSalad in their general education course, Digital Media. The goal of this project was to provide an active, engaging and exciting learning environment for nonmajor students to gain intermediate level computing skills including basic knowledge about programming. We chose to use GameSalad to develop apps and games for the ios platform on Apple devices. Research has shown that such visual programming tools can help students learn basic programming concepts without getting frustrated by the syntax[4, 8]. We also hoped to leverage student interest in mobile devices such as the ipad and mobile applications to engage them in the classroom and get them interested in computing.

2 In summary, through mobile game development, our goals for this pilot project were to improve the IT skills of our college graduates so they can contribute productively in the working field, and to increase student interest in IT by providing an engaging learning environment. BACKGROUND RESEARCH Many computing/it degree programs in colleges and universities offer an introductory level IT course for major and non-major students. Traditionally, this introductory course is often offered in programming using Java, C++, Visual Basic or other programming languages. Over the past years, offering such introductory courses in programming has been identified as one of the curriculum problems with many computing degree programs[12]. It has been identified as an obstacle to broadening participation in computing since it focuses more on language specific content. This approach often keeps non-major students away from becoming an IT major. Secondly, some IT students switch to other disciplines after taking such a course as their first IT course. In order to recruit and retain students, many efforts have been put into designing an interesting and engaging introductory course. One approach is to use computer game as the theme since many students are interested in computer games [2, 7]. This approach does motivate the students to a certain degree. However, students still have to face the language specific content. Therefore, visual programming tools such as Scratch and Alice have become popular in recent years [6, 9, 11, 13, 14]. Using visualized programming is engaging and does not require prior programming knowledge. With mobile game development, students can test their product on mobile devices and receive immediate feedback, which relates the learning process to their real life. With explosive usage of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, mobile devices have been portrayed as a fashion element and generate enthusiasm from the students. Visualized mobile game tools provide students the opportunity to fully demonstrate their creativity. It is relevant to students lifestyle since the final product has the potential to be uploaded and shared with many other mobile device users. All these characteristics make mobile game development appealing for students. Uludag, Karajus and Turner shared their successful experience of using App Inventor to motivate students by creating apps for Android system[13]. Wolber also piloted mobile development using App Inventor in 2009 and he found the experience very rewarding in terms of student reaction and learning outcomes [15]. In this paper, we present our experience of using GameSalad to develop apps and mobile games for ios, and of testing them on ipads. In the following sections, we will describe the institutional context of the course that incorporates the mobile game development component, the free visualized game development tool GameSalad, and the project implementation details. We will then share both student and faculty perspectives on this project. RESEARCH METHOD Institutional Context Georgia Gwinnett College (GGC) is a premier 21st century liberal arts college that emphasizes on graduating students with strong technical skills. To this end, all GGC students are required to take two information technology courses. The first course in this sequence is an introductory computing course (ITEC 1001) that focuses on both conceptual knowledge and basic skills development. For the second course the students can choose from either Introduction to Programming (ITEC 2120) or Digital Media (ITEC 2110). Our enrollment indicates that most non-major students prefer to take Digital Media over Introduction to Programming. Introduction

3 to Programming is currently taught in Java and is widely perceived as being a difficult course. The Digital Media course on the other hand focuses on theoretical concepts and practical aspects of working with various digital media. Both courses are intended to improve the IT fluency of our students, to inculcate logical thinking and problem solving skills. Digital Media was designed to meet these goals and to clear some of the misconceptions about the computing field by leveraging the students interest in digital and social media. Students work with a variety of digital media applications on Mac operating systems in this class. GameSalad GameSalad Creator is a game development tool that is designed to empower everyone to create games for various platforms, irrespective of their proficiency in a specific programming language. This tool is freely available online for download and use on Mac operating system. The tool provides easy drag and drop features that allow individuals to create games. GameSalad Viewer is another free tool that can be downloaded and used to test GameSalad applications on mobile devices such as iphone/ipad. Currently, there are two versions of the Viewer; one is ios viewer and another is Android Viewer. Classroom Experience When integrating GameSalad into our Digital Media course our goals were: 1) To increase student engagement in a computing course by providing an active learning environment. 2) To leverage student interest in mobile technology and apps/games to inculcate logical thinking and problem-solving skills. Also, as part of Georgia Gwinnett College s commitment to undergraduate research experience, our objectives are to enable the students to work collaboratively and to use library and online resources for research purposes. The GameSalad component also afforded an excellent opportunity to the students to integrate their image-editing and audio-editing skills gained throughout the semester into their game. The students worked throughout the semester researching existing apps and mobile game design principles and creating images and soundtrack for an educational app that they developed using GameSalad. Data collection and analysis In Fall 2011 we piloted this project in two sections of Digital Media. 70 students participated in the survey that was administered at the end of the semester. Students were asked about their background (gender, age, college year, major), computer usage habits and experience with touchscreen mobile devices, if any. The survey also included questions about students computing attitudes, many of which were adapted from existing instruments. The survey asked students about their perceived amount and quality of engagement with their peers and the instructor, and their feedback about the mobile game development experience using GameSalad. RESULTS The background information of the 70 students that participated in this end of semester survey in Fall 2011 is as follows: 64.63% of the participants were male, while 35.37% were female. A majority of the participants were in the age group and were sophomores % of the participants were

4 non-stem majors, 17.5% were ITEC majors and 16.25% were other STEM majors. Only 8.75% of the participants were undecided/undeclared majors. Majority of the students had never written programs or created games before, while most of them had used an iphone/ipod/ipad before. When asked about the apps used on mobile devices, the participant responses showed a wide range. Applications ranged from games such as Angry Birds to popular social media apps and personal organization apps. There was no mention of educational apps used for studying. The following chart(figure 1) shows the average student computing attitudes as reported on the end of semester survey: Figure 1 Average Student Computing Attitudes As can be seen in Figure 1, students strongly agreed with statements indicating that computers are fun, useful and will be required in their future work. The survey participants strongly disagreed with statements indicating that computers are boring or that computer jobs are all about programming. Participants responded positively to statements indicating that computing is a logical and creative activity and the participants confidence and willingness to learn new software tools were also high. Although most students agreed that creating mobile games was fun, they also indicated that this was hard. Also, although students responded very positively to wanting to learn more about computing, the interest in computing careers was average. Figure 2 depicts student engagement with their peers and the instructor. As can be seen in this chart the students in the mobile game development sections indicated higher engagement with peers and instructors as compared to those in traditional sections of the same course.the responses to open ended questions indicated that students liked the game creation experience, but also found it challenging. They overwhelmingly responded that the amount of time spent on GameSalad was insufficient and should be increased in future offerings of the course. Finally the average improvement between pre-quiz, administered at the beginning of the semester and post-quiz, administered at the end of the semester was 29.7%.

5 Figure 2 Student Engagement Results CONCLUSION The popularity of mobile devices and mobile apps, the interactive drag and drop game creation software and the immediate visual feedback provided by them can be leveraged to engage students in computing classes and increase their interest in computing. The simple game development tool can be used to inculcate problem-solving and logical thinking skills among students. In this pilot project, students investigated existing educational mobile apps, conducted research on mobile game development and user interface design principles and created an educational app in their area of academic interest using GameSalad. The participants reported the game development experience to be both challenging and fun. The participants self-reported attitudes towards computing were positive. The student-faculty and student-student engagement was higher than in the traditional sections. Although faculty expressed some concerns regarding platform dependence and constantly updating versions of software, the overall faculty experience and response was positive. REFERENCES [1] Clement, M., Posada, D. and Crandall, K. A., TCS: a computer program to estimate gene genealogies, Molecular Ecology 9(10), , 2000 [2] Cliburn, D. C. and Miller, S., Games, stories, or something more traditional: the types of assignments college students prefer, Proceedings of the 39th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education, , [3] Dodds Z., Alvarado, C., Kuenning G. and Libeskind-Hadas, R., Breadth-first CS1 for scientists, Proceedings of the 12th annual SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education, 23 27, [4] Dougherty, J.P., Concept visualization in cs0 using Alice, Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges, 22 (3), , 2007.

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