Design and develop a game for young students to learn essential programming skills (A)

• Main Author: Lim, Vanessa Wei Jia
• Other Authors: Wesley Tan Chee Wah
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2022
• Subjects: Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/157861
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

There has been a rise in the number of coding applications available to educate children on how to code. However, most coding applications have gaps that are not being addressed. For example, most of them do not target code efficiency and other essential soft skills such as planning and collaboration skills effectively. Hence, this project aims to develop an educational WebGL game that teaches children aged 10-14 years old programming concepts, code efficiency and essential soft skills such as problem-solving, collaboration, and planning skills. Research has shown that girls are less motivated to learn programming due to the gender stereotype that boys are better. Hence, this project also aims to encourage and motivate girls to learn programming. Flow-based programming is used as the “coding language”. This project made use of deliberate game design to achieve the learning outcomes for the players. In this project, the core technologies used are Azure WebApp, Azure PlayFab, Unity, and Photon Engine. This project is done as a team of two and a prototype of the game is developed. The portion of the game completed thus far includes the overall design of the game, the Introduction, Story Mode which includes both the lectures and the exercises as well as the Collaboration Mode. This report will focus on the implementation of the flow-based programming, demo scene, exercises in Story mode, and the Collaboration mode excluding the dungeon aspect of the game.