Haven’t we always taught our kids things by turning learning into a game? A team of scientists at the University of California have taught similarly and have endeavoured to teach its students Java programming through a CodeSpells video game. CodeSpells was developed by a group of graduate students led by computer scientist William Griswold, and is intended for elementary to high school-aged students. The idea was to develop a method of learning that could be structured by the student in a creative manner, that they would willingly spend hours doing.
The Game
Within the universe of the first-person game, the player is a wizard in a land inhabited by gnomes. Because the gnomes have lost their ability to use magic, the player helps them out by casting spells for them. Those spells are written in Java by the player, with some assistance from the game. Along with helping the gnomes, players can also earn merit badges by completing simple quests.
Test and Trials
This game was tested on 40 girls aged between 10 and 12. These girls had never been exposed to programming before and therefore were the right subjects to assess the efficacy of the video game. The researchers found out that merely within an hour of the game, the girls had grasped the basic concepts of Java programming. They were able to use the language in order to complete the tasks of the game.
Future prospects
The researchers plan to make it software free to use so that educational institutions can use the video game to teach their students programming. Given the growing importance of technology in today’s society, it is important to give children a head start in programming languages. Through this game, it is hoped that learners will be hooked to the game and a result is hooked to learning programming. In fact, just after playing level one of CodeSpells, players will be introduced to key components of Java like parameters, for if statements, for loops and while loops.
Inspiration
The computer scientists responsible for this novel idea of learning evolved mainly because of the difficulty in finding trained instructors to teach programming to students at elementary and high school levels. As such, they were determined to look for a way to help these students learn beyond the classroom level. The game would help keep these young learners tuned into the game and subconsciously make them learn programming so as to complete the objectives of the game.
The study conducted on this video game was showcased at the SIGSE conference in March. It is also worth noting that CodeSpells is the only video game available right now that has been successful in integrating programming into gameplay. This way, the frustrating process of learning programming is eliminated as this is achieved through a fun and interactive game.
