A Video Game-Like Approach to Supporting Novices in Learning Programming

摘要

In the education of introductory programming, people often adopt block-based visual programming languages such as Scratch and Blockly that allow programmers to construct programs by placing visual blocks. A previous study showed that a block-based language was more effective than a text-based language in introductory programming education. However, even with such block-based languages, it is still necessary for novices to learn programming in traditional ways, for example, by hearing lectures, reading textbooks, or watching tutorial videos. In this paper, we propose a video game-like approach to supporting novices in learning programming. We introduce two concepts into a block-based programming system: one is a staging mechanism that allows novices to gradually obtain more complex means of programming; the other is an assistant chatbot that helps novices to gain knowledge of programming. We implemented the system by applying our approach to turtle graphics. We present results of the experiment that we conducted to evaluate our approach.