Code rangers: A gamefield structured learning environment for competitive programming

• Main Authors: Abejuro, Christian Keil P., Cua, Sean Felix T., Go, Matthew Allen S., Soriano, Juan Miguel B.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2016
• Subjects: Computer programming > Competitions; Computer Sciences
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/11221
• Institution: De La Salle University

Online judges are used by competitive programmers as well as students to practice and hone their skills in programming. Unfortunately, most online judges are not explicitly designed as a training platform. Because of this, beginners are often lost when finding a suitable problem and get stuck on hard problems due to the lack of an effective training structure to follow. This causes them to become less inclined to practice further. Recently, there has been a trend of non-gaming applications introducing elements found in video games in order to increase user engagement and retention. This practice is known as gamification. This research project designed and implemented an online judge that is better suited for practice by utilizing gamification to create a structured training program to better guide and motivate its users to practice. Results show that the users of this system were substantially more active in practicing than those who did not use the system. However, the results were unable to show an improvement in learning in comparison to their current systems.