USING SCOTTIE GO! AS GAME BASED LEARNING TOOL FOR COMPUTATIONAL THINKING COURSE

Abstract

The pervasiveness of information and communication technologies in everyday life imposes the need to be digitally proficient. Computational thinking and learning to code are necessary 21st century skills for students. Those skills can drastically influence future labor market. Carefully planned educational approaches must be used in order to develop computational thinking skills at primary school level. We propose to use game based learning combined with flipped classroom and collaborative team work. This can utilize students’ energy and enthusiasm they have when playing games, in achieving educational goals. This methodological approach is also very useful to develop different level of digital competences focusing on a technology as a tool for achieving certain goal. Scottie Go! is an interactive puzzle-based mobile game which aims to involve primary school children in coding using approach similar to popular block based coding approaches such as Scratch coding environment. The coding is very similar to making the ordinary paper puzzle, where each part of the puzzle is one coding instruction. The “compiling” of code is done using mobile app camera-based interface that is very popular among students. This simple and tactile approach makes easier for young learners to deal with abstract coding concepts without depending on technology at one side, and developing sophisticated digital competences (simplified augmented reality) at other side. The collaborative game approach is used in order to integrate less interested or talented students in achieving learning outcomes in a very natural way. By playing the game students have both fun and possibility to learn from the other in the flipped classroom manner. The proposed approach was used with 120 students from six different primary schools over a period of two months. The students than took part in the survey concerning their overall experience in using the game for development of computational skills. Information concerning students’ interest in the game, ease of use, students' quality of experience and correspondence to educational goals were obtained using the survey. In addition, An exam has been carried out to evaluate students’ learning achievements and long term knowledge. Survey results together with exams’ results indicate that the proposed approach has created collaborative, stimulating and motivational learning environments which lead to successful achieving of learning outcomes. Proposed teaching methodology and results of the survey are presented in the paper.