FGPE Plus: Learning tools interoperability for gamified programming education

Background

With the spread of digitization, there is an unsatisfied need for skilled workers in the Information Technology (IT) sector, especially the programmers: in Europe alone there are up to 825,000 IT job vacancies even this year. Acquiring such skills is difficult, or at least perceived as such. While the former is a reason for students leaving or failing programming-related courses, the latter is no less harmful, as it is the reason why many students avoid such courses in the first place. Learning programming can be made simpler if adequate educational tools are provided, such as learning environments capable of automated assessment, even more with the proper use of gamification making learning experience similar to a game.

In the ongoing Framework for Gamified Programming Education (FGPE) project, we developed a technological base enabling the gamification of programming education, including: a general scheme and format for gamified exercises, open-source tools for editing and playing with the exercises, and a set of such exercises.

The project aims is to provide a framework for application of gamification to programming education, including the specifications, collection of gamified exercises and software.

The expected impact of the project is an improvement in efficiency of programming education and its student-perceived experience.

Background

With the spread of digitization, there is an unsatisfied need for skilled workers in the Information Technology (IT) sector, especially the programmers: in Europe alone there are up to 825,000 IT job vacancies even this year. Acquiring such skills is difficult, or at least perceived as such. While the former is a reason for students leaving or failing programming-related courses, the latter is no less harmful, as it is the reason why many students avoid such courses in the first place. Learning programming can be made simpler if adequate educational tools are provided, such as learning environments capable of automated assessment, even more with the proper use of gamification making learning experience similar to a game.

In the ongoing Framework for Gamified Programming Education (FGPE) project, we developed a technological base enabling the gamification of programming education, including: a general scheme and format for gamified exercises, open-source tools for editing and playing with the exercises, and a set of such exercises.