The document summarizes a systematic review of research on using games to teach programming. It describes the review's methodology, including searching academic databases and conferences for studies from 2009-2013. The results found that games were effective at teaching programming concepts using languages like Java and visual programming environments. Studies varied in scale but most found games improved motivation, concentration, and pass rates for programming students across education levels. Benefits included workshops being fun and engaging ways to learn programming processes, while limitations included abstraction and specifying solutions.

1. The use of games on the teaching of programming:
a systematic review
Postgraduate Program in Computer Systems – PPgSC
Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte – UFRN
Natal - Brazil
Thiago Reis da Silva
thiagoreis@ppgsc.ufrn.br
Eduardo Aranha
eduardoaranha@dimap.ufrn.br
Tainá Jesus Medeiros
tainamedeiros@ppgsc.ufrn.br

2. Contents
1. Introduction;
2. Method;
3. Results;
4. Final Considerations.
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3. 1. Introduction
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4. 1. Introduction
 There are several difficulties faced by beginners during the process of
learning programming;
 Possibilities: exigency logical-mathematical requirements in the
discipline;
 Due to the difficulties continually faced by beginners courses of
technology areas, has resulted in high dropout and desist;
 Various efforts have been made by researchers and educators to try to
overcome the difficulties encountered by beginners in this area.
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5. 1. Introduction
 Systematic Review:
 It is a type of secondary study that follows a methodologically well-
defined research process to identify, analyze and interpret all
available evidence related to a specific research question of an
unbiased way and (to some extent) repeatable.
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6. 2. Method
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7. 2. Method
 Objective:
 Determine the effectiveness of the use of digital games as a teaching tool and
programming learning;
 Making an overview of the analysis of practical experience and research regarding the
use of digital games for the teaching and learning of programming in the international
context.
 Original guidelines proposed by Kitchenham et. al. (2009);
 We included articles 1 January 2009 to 31 December 2013.
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8. 2. Method
 Research Questions:
 QP1: Which programming languages are being taught by studies that make
use of games as teaching tools?
 QP2: What studies are being performed by researchers who investigate the
use of games on programming teaching?
 QP3: What is the scale (number of attendees) of the studies that are being
conducted by researchers?
 QP4: Do the reported studies indicate effectiveness in the use of games for teaching
programming?
 QP5: What schooling levels are being contemplated by the studies?
 QP6: The approaches are based on Distance Learning or traditional face-to-face
contact?
 QP7: What skills and competencies are being exploited?
 QP8: What benefits and limitations are being reported?
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9. 2. Method
 Searching Process
 Electronic databases:
 IEEE Xplorer,
 ACM Digital Library;
 ScienceDirect.
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10. 2. Method
 Searching Process
 Conferences:
 Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE), Conference on International Computing
Education Research (ICER), Conference on Foundations of Digital Games (FDG), Transactions on Computing
Education (TOCE), Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE),
International Conference on Digital Game and Intelligent Toy Enhanced Learning (DIGITEL), Workshop on
Network and System Support for Games (NetGames), Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games
(CIG), Conference on Information Technology Education (SIGITE), Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics
and Games (I3D), International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), International Symposium on
Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM) e International Conference on Evaluation and
Assessment in Software Engineering (EASE).
 Journal:
 Journal Computer and Education (JCE), Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges (JCSC) e International
Journal of Educational Research (IJER).
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11. 2. Method
 Searching Process
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12. 2. Method
 Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria
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13. 2. Method
 Data extraction
 Objective;
 Study method;
 Number of participants involved;
 Education level;
 Type of Programming Languages;
 Results;
 Conclusion.
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14. 3. Results
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15.  QP1: Which programming languages are being taught by studies
that make use of games as teaching tools?
 7 Programming Linguagens;
 Using software to teach programming concepts;
 Ex.: Greenfoot (5), Alice (4), Scratch (2), Blocky (1) e GameMaker (1);
 Robotics;
 Ex.: Lego Mindstorms (2) e LighBot (1).
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3. Results

16.  QP2: What studies are being performed by researchers who
investigate the use of games on programming teaching?
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3. Results

17.  QP3: What is the scale (number of attendees) of the studies that
are being conducted by researchers?
 Studies varied widely;
 Exemple: 8, 9, 322, 325;
 QP4: Do the reported studies indicate effectiveness in the use of
games for teaching programming?
 Efficient: 97%;
 Mixed: 3%
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3. Results

18.  QP5: What schooling levels are being contemplated by the
studies?
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3. Results

19.  QP6: The approaches are based on Distance Learning or
traditional face-to-face contact?
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3. Results

20.  QP7: What skills and competencies are being exploited?
 Few are the studies that clearly show the skills and competencies explored;
 Two skills: cognitive and social.
 Cognitive:
 “players build algorithms during game-play, designing their own solutions” (collaboration
skills) [E11];
 “gamers often use logical condition, in order to achieve a higher score in the game and when
they want to create reusable solutions” (establish logical conclusions) [E7].
 Social:
 Dealing with rules; cooperate and collaborate [E11] [E18] [E20] [E35] e [E47].
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3. Results

21.  QP8: What benefits and limitations are being reported?
 Benefits:
 The use of games motivates and improves the programming education, increasing the
power of concentration of the students and the pass rate, as well as decrease in the
number of dropouts in disciplines involving programming;
 Use workshops as fun and attractive way to the learning of programming process;
 Using software to teach programming - with Scratch, Game Maker, Blockly, Alice and
Greenfoot - as a way to make the most dynamic teaching-learning process.
 Limitations:
 Abstraction difficulties and understanding of the issues;
 Specify and code a solution.
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3. Results

22.  Threats to validity:
 The research was organized in a manual and automatic search
process in a specific set of journals, conferences and journals;
 A single researcher selected studies, based on their titles,
abstracts, keywords and conclusions;
 A single researcher tabular data, despite the others had checked
the data extraction.
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3. Results

23. 4. Conclusion
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24.  Various results and trends:
 Java is the one that has been most frequently adopted in the
research;
 Case studies and control experiments are the most commonly
reported methods and used to evaluate the efficacy of the
intervention game;
 The number of participants who took part in the survey to
assess the effectiveness of the use of games in education
programming varies widely from study to study;
 Half of the research is being applied to higher education.
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4. Conclusion
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Acknowledgments
Questions
trsilva.si@gmail.com