The document discusses the development of a new visual authoring tool called Stick&Click that allows teachers and students to create simple digital games without programming. It aims to empower digital creativity through a card game metaphor and minimal rules. The tool is being tested in Danish classrooms to support existing practices of game design and authoring, with the goal of making interactive digital content creation accessible to non-programmers. Ongoing work focuses on usability testing and a mobile version to enable touch-based game development.

1. “The road towards friendly,
classroom-centered interactive
digital contents authoring”
Andrea Valente
Emanuela Marchetti
University of Southern Denmark (SDU)
Odense Denmark

2. How to support authoring
of digital games (in class) ?
• In the past 10 years we worked on the problem of teachers
and pupils who want to author their own digital games (1)
• Situation:
tinkering is common,
creating analog games is too,
but…
changing a digital
game requires a
programmer
(1) “Learning via Game Design From Digital to Card Games and Back Again”
Marchetti, Emanuela; Valente, Andrea; Electronic Journal of E-Learning , 2015

3. Digital authoring
without a programmer
(or programming?)
… but how?
• Can we empower teachers and pupils to create digital interactive contents?
• Can we decouple digital creativity from programming?
• Do we need a full programming language for digital creativity? (Turing-complete?)
We explored alternative metaphors for programmming:
a card-game metaphor (diagram above)
and looked at a minimalistic approach, similar to game design and editing

4. Game design in the (Danish) classroom
• Existing pedagogical practice of editing/designing games, currently common in
Danish primary schools. Typical workflow:
– teachers introduce a topic in a lecture
– pupils engage with books and digital resources (gathered by teachers), such as: articles
or videos available on-line, or games
– then pupils play the given games and/or to produce creative artefacts to exemplify their
understanding: via board/card games, videos, or digital slides
• Danish schools are also starting to teach programming (CT) ->
they are open to exploring different digital tools, not just existing digital games or editors
• Many studies and evidence show usefulness of existing digital contents and self-
created analog games…
BUT… we observed a lack of tools for authoring interactive digital contents,
specifically targeted at teachers and pupils!

5. Requirements for Stick&Click
Need for new kind of visual, digital game authoring tool, with:
• no code -> just simple before/after rules
• limited interaction -> only point&Click game development
– with multiple rooms (here called pages)
• allows kids/teachers authoring of simple digital games, with custom images
and audio
• visual and possibly for web and/or android
• focus on the software engineering/design-cycle parts of CT
• as simple as possible computational model (i.e. hopefully easy to understand)
– based on a variation on hyperlinks!
– also: no math, no coordinates (?)

6. Inspiration…
Stickers and albums Game prototyping with paper
empty
Stickers Backgrounds Page (in an album)
Before ->
After
Before ->
After
…
Rules
places

7. Start here
click
Example of game with a single page:
Click the key and the boy gets it.
Then click the on the door and it will open.
Click on the open door and you will win.
Other features:
• multi-page
• persistency

8. Definition of the example
Notice that rule 1 and 4 are one the opposite of the other, as in the previous page :)

9. We made a node.js transpiler for our language, and gave it a Blockly GUI
Below is the same game with the visual GUI.
But… too code-like and not “visual”, non “tangible” -> can scare!

10. Current prototype workflow
So we created a new version in P5,
that has an editor and a player,
both working as WebApps.
The workflow is as shown:
We are currently testing it.
(DEMO)
You can see a preview here:
Editor:
https://editor.p5js.org/andrea270872/present/s9xijiDlG
Player:
https://editor.p5js.org/andrea270872/present/chgF2ZeNP
rules
cards
Export to paper…

11. Scenarios of use
teacher
Stick&Click
create
game
play/
understand
child
child
child
teacher
Stick&Click
explain
child
child
child
playtest and
(re)design &
the game
1.
2.
child
child

12. Conclusion
and ongoing work
• So why? “friendly, classroom-centered interactive digital contents authoring”
– pupils and teachers can create own digital contents
– designed to be friendly towards non-programmers
– the workflow matches and supports existing analog/paper-based activities in the
classroom,
– the resulting digital contents are not just a PDF, but instead are interactive, game-like.
• Open questions: how-to score or lives, orchestration of game development in classroom
• Tests with teachers of a local school in Denmark (late 2019/spring 2020)
– deploy Stick&Click and observe it within the classroom ecology,
– goals: make P5 protoype user-friendly,
capable of covering authoring of interesting digital games,
and simplify/perfect the stickers+album metaphor
• Finally: make a working mobile version (python+Kivy) -> touch!

13. Conclusion
and ongoing work
• So why? “friendly, classroom-centered interactive digital contents authoring”
– pupils and teachers can create own digital contents
– designed to be friendly towards non-programmers
– the workflow matches and supports existing analog/paper-based activities in the
classroom,
– the resulting digital contents are not just a PDF, but instead are interactive, game-like.
• Open questions: how-to score or lives, orchestration of game development in classroom
• Tests with teachers of a local school in Denmark (late 2019/spring 2020)
– deploy Stick&Click and observe it within the classroom ecology,
– goals: make P5 protoype user-friendly,
capable of covering authoring of interesting digital games,
and simplify/perfect the stickers+album metaphor
• Finally: make a working mobile version (python+Kivy) -> touch!