Learning programming on mobile phones (1)

• Main Author: Chee, Kwan Yong
• Other Authors: Xing Zhenchang
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2015
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Computer science and engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/65588
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Using games as educational tools are picking up in the society. In this project, an Android game application will be developed to teach programming to determine the effectiveness of using game as a learning experience. Dating back to as early as the 1970s, there are already literatures on using games for education however adoption rates are low as it lacks empirical evidence. In recent years, games especially mobile games are getting more and more popular as smartphone penetration rate increase exponentially in the Singapore population. In 2014, numerous news articles reported that Singapore plans to introduce programming lessons in public schools. This was also supported by the Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong urging students to learn coding to stay competitive in the future. After analysing the findings, a decision was made to ride on the gaming trend along with the government support to plan, design and develop an Android game using game mechanics to teach basic concepts of programming giving beginners a head start. Intuitive tutorial learning combined with mini task game play form the core mechanics of a game learning experience for beginners. After completion of the prototype, surveys were conducted and results collected for analysis. Evaluation of the results show that using game to teach basic concepts of programming can have some level of effectiveness.