Analyzing Collaboration in the Gamification Process of

Childprogramming

Ana María Chimunja

, Cesar Alberto Collazos

, Julio Ariel Hurtado

and Habib M. Fardoun

University of Cauca, Popayán, Colombia

Ahlia University, Bahrain

Keywords: Childprogramming, Collaboration Engineering, Collaborative Work, Children's Programming, Children's

Programming, Gamification.

Abstract: According to Jeannette Wing computational thinking involves problem solving, system design and

understanding of human behavior, making use of the fundamental concepts of informatics, thus, it means

that boys and girls acquire skills to solve problems in different contexts through informatics and software

programming in different devices. For the purpose of supporting the initiatives to strengthen the

development of computational thinking, the Software engineering research and development group (IDIS)

of the University of Cauca, in 2012 formalized the Childprogramming model to support the development of

software oriented to children, based on strategies of collaborative learning, agile software development, and

ludic learning. Since then, this model has been improved, such as, the Childprogramming-G model that

looks for the improvement of the ludic learning, offering gamification strategies for the software

development process carried out by children. This article presents an exploratory case study where the

ChildProgramming-G version was applied, taking some dynamics and game mechanics combined with the

previous sensitization of the importance of collaborative work in children's work teams. From this case

study it was possible to obtain more information about the collaborative processes involved in the teaching-

learning process of the software development carried out by children.

1 INTRODUCTION

The case study presented in this article is part of the

research "Childprogramming-C: Extending

Childprogramming from Collaborative

Engineering", proposed by the IDIS Research

Group, as an improvement of the collaborative

dimension of the current ChildProgramming model

(Hurtado et al., 2012). This work is framed within

the research lines of Collaboration Engineering and

Software Engineering, and seeks to contribute in the

design of collaborative processes, contributing

significantly in the teaching of software

development at an early age, and encouraging the

resolution of problems Complex and the

development of computational thinking.

Since 2013 improvements have been made to the

Childprogramming model, such as the version of the

Childprogramming-G model (Garcia and Orejuela,

2014), which offers a more dynamic process for

teaching software programming for children in

different de-vices, with the help of techniques and

dynamics of gamification. In the search to improve

the collaborative component of the model, the

Childprogrammig - C project has developed case

studies to identify aspects that allow improving the

collaborative component from the Collaborative

Engineering approach from case studies. This article

analyses the collaboration of the software

development process from three fundamental

aspects, which are: positive interdependence, equal

participation, and individual responsibility as

essential elements that must be presented in the

collaboration, so that the Learning takes place

effectively (Collazos et al., 2007), also takes into

account the definition of team strategies and the

work of the leader.

Next, section two describes some conceptual

elements of the Collaborative Collaboration and

Engineering that guide the development of the

proposed work. In section three, a brief presentation

of the methodology is made; then, section four

analyses the results of the case study, and finally

section five shows the conclusions and future work.

794

Chimunja, A., Collazos, C., Hurtado, J. and Fardoun, H.

Analyzing Collaboration in the Gamiﬁcation Process of Childprogramming.

DOI: 10.5220/0006942407940800

In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Software Technologies (ICSOFT 2018), pages 794-800

ISBN: 978-989-758-320-9

2 THEORETICAL REFERENCES

This section describes some concepts necessary for

the contextualization of the article. The first of these

is Collaboration Engineering, attached to Software

Engineering as an area that promotes an

organizational philosophy of the development

process and that fosters teamwork, based on the

recognition of the individual skills and abilities of

the group Work (Jurado and Collazos, 2013), later

gamification is presented as a process of

incorporation of game elements in non-play

processes (Deterding, 2011), and finally the

ChildProgramming model and its version is

presented.

2.1 Engineering Collaboration

The field of Collaboration Engineering has emerged

as a focal point for research on the design and

implementation of collaborative processes that are

recurrent in nature and executed by professionals in

organizations, rather than collaborative

professionals(De Vreede et al, 2009). By

collaborating, individuals achieve greater results

than they could individually, however, achieving

effective team collaboration remains a challenge

(Vreede and Briggs, 2005).

From the need to design, execute and structure

collaborative processes within different groups,

Collaboration Engineering arises (Kolfschoten et al.,

2006), which is "a systematic approach to the design

of repeatable collaboration processes, which can be

used to Increase human efficiency and effectiveness

in organizations " (Kolfschoten et al., 2006).

Collaboration Engineering is an approach to the

design of reusable collaborative processes, therefore,

collaborative processes need to be explicitly

designed, structured and managed, in order to be

transferable to groups, using collaborative

techniques and technologies (Vreede and Briggs,

2005).

2.2 Collaborative Work

Collaborative work offers an option to overcome

limitations of traditional learning, under this scheme

the presence of different actors and their

coordination must be taken into account, since

situations require collaboration, communication and

exchange of information (Mendoza and Galvis,

1998), integrating aspects of collaborative work into

a given process, the goal is not only to improve

communication, but also to achieve greater

participation and commitment among the members

of a group working on a common activity, leading to

better quality Of the processed product (Collazos

and Mendoza, 2006).

Johnson and Johnson have developed several

statistical analyzes with students of different ages,

educational and social levels, and have demonstrated

the positive effect that collaborative learning has had

on their academic success and their social

achievements (Johnson and Johnson, 1994), thus

defining work Collaborative as (Johnson and

Johnson, 1994): "the set of methods of instruction or

training for use in small groups, as well as strategies

to foster the development of mixed skills (learning

and personal and social development), where each

group member is responsible both of their learning

as of the rest of the group".

Turban defines that group work has a number of

advantages over individual work, among them one

has: a group understands a problem better than a

single person, there is a shared responsibility, it

facilitates the detection of errors, a group presents

A greater knowledge than a single person, which

offers better alternatives for solving problems,

presents effectiveness and quality of production,

the effectiveness and quality of production of a

group is greater than the sum of what each member

can produce in Individual form, since this

individual knowledge is strengthened with the

group obtaining better results; In this way

collaboration is one of the main components of the

Childprogramming Model that seeks to be

improved (Turban, 1995).

2.3 Gamification

Gamification is defined as the application of basic

elements that make fun and attractive to things that

are not normally considered a game (Sridharan et

al., 2012). Similarly refers to "the adoption of

gaming technology and methods of game design

outside the video game industry" (Deterding et al.,

2011). "The process of using game thinking and

game mechanics to solve problems and attract

users" (Hagglund, 2012).

ChildPrograming in its gamified version has

taken into account gamification oriented in an

educational and collaborative environment,

incorporating elements of play in a classroom

context with the objective of engaging students

with learning through activities that provide fun

experiences of their own Games for children (Lee

and Hammer., 2011). Within gamification the

following concepts play a very important role:

Analyzing Collaboration in the Gamiﬁcation Process of Childprogramming

795

 Game mechanics: rules that aim to increase

the motivation and the commitment of the

players through the achievement of objectives

and with the purpose of obtaining recognition

(Beza, 2011).

 Game dynamics: are the human needs and

concerns that motivate people and are the

result of using the game mechanics (Beza,

2011).

2.4 ChildProgrammig Model

Some discussions in the area of software

programming in children have focused on different

topics such as: identify how to create programming

languages with children, or whether children can

learn particular topics in software programming

(Sheingold, 1987); however, other issues have been

addressed in finding a strategy for small children to

create their own programs, this is the case of the

ChildProgramming model, which is born as a project

idea in the IDIS group, and formalizes a model to

support the development of software oriented to

children.

Considering that collaborative learning is a set of

methods of instruction or training for use in small

groups, as well as strategies to promote the

development of personal and social skills (Gomez,

and Izuzquiza, 2015), the ChildProgramming model

also proposes the collaborative dimension, which

attempts to increase The quality of learning and

favors the acquisition of students knowledge through

interaction between them, through software

development (Cruz and Rojas, 2013).

Figure 1: Early Child Programming Process Life Cycle.

ChildProgramming consists of three dimensions

(Cruz and Rojas, 2013): the cognitive dimension,

considered as the effort that a child will make to

understand, analyze and appropriate situations

present in the tasks defined by ChildProgramming,

contributing to the process the main concepts for the

development of the same. The Agile dimension:

based on the promulgation of the manifesto values

of agile software development methodologies, the

agile dimension provides ChildProgramming with an

agreed form of work to achieve the objectives where

a team work is evidenced that allows the members of

the same stay together throughout the activity.

ChildPrograming defines three phases: pre-game,

game and post-game as shown in figure 1, and

proposes the following roles: teacher, team guide,

team and researcher.

The model has been evolving and its latest

version has incorporated improvements related to

gamification, obtaining the model ChildPrograming

- G (Garcia and Orejuela, 2014), presented in the

figure 2, where it can be appreciated a significant

improvement regarding tasks and the tutor role.

Figure 2: Childprogramming-G process lifecycle (Garcia

and Orejuela, 2014).

Currently working on Childprogramming-C to

strengthen the collaborative component from the

Collaborative Engineering approach.

3 METHODOLOGY

3.1 CSACE (Case Study based Analysis

in Collaboration Engineering)

For the development of the ChildProgramming - C

project, the CSACE method has been followed,

IDEE 2018 - Special Session on Interaction Design in Educational Environments

796

which is based on case studies to establish the needs

of collaborative processes from the team

interactions, as well as the empirical evaluation of

the effectiveness of the resulting collaborative

process, see figure 3. It integrates the need to study

the phenome-none of collaboration in software

development teams and the case study as a

methodology to conduct such a study (Hurtado and

Collazos, 2014). The case studies are a research

methodology that has proven to be useful for

Software Engineering in the analysis of study

subjects that are easier to observe in group than in

isolation (Runeson and Höst, 2009), so they are a

viable approach to The analysis and evaluation of

collaborative pro-cesses (Hurtado and Collazos,

2014).

Figure 3: Fundamental structure of the CSACE method

(Hurtado and Collazos, 2014).

Following the CSACE method, exploratory case

studies have been performed to identify and

understand the interactions of children's teams while

developing software oriented with the

Childprogramming and ChildProgramming model,

using the Scratch 2.0 programming tool and the

process tracking tool Gamitool.

During the development of the case studies

applying the initial Childprogramming model,

several failures of the team work and the

collaboration of the members of the same one, for

which, an activity of sensitization was proposed on

the importance of the collaborative work in the

phase Pre-game model, where children are taught

the importance of collaboration before starting a

software development process.

In the figure 4 and 5, you can see some of the

dynamics made for children in the process of

awareness raising, the importance of positive

interdependence, individual responsibility and equal

participation in work teams to achieve goals.

Figure 4: Collaborative dynamics one.

Figure 5: Collaborative dynamics two.

Subsequently, a case study was carried out to

validate if there is an impact on the work teams by

raising awareness in children about the importance

of collaboration, combined with the structuring and

planning of mechanics and game dynamics

applicable in the pro-cess of software development.

3.2 Applying the

ChildProgramming-G Model

3.2.1 Pre-game Phase

Once the process of raising awareness about the

importance of Collaborative work was carried out,

the children organized the software development

teams, assigning a name and choosing a leader. The

teacher gave the team the mission that included a set

of programming challenges in laptops and mobile

devices. Initially in this phase the teacher and the

researcher chose the dynamics and game mechanics

that would be used, taking into account the

characteristics of the children and the environment

where the case study was developed, between the

eight game mechanics and five dynamics of Game

Analyzing Collaboration in the Gamiﬁcation Process of Childprogramming

797

revised by Childprogramming-G, those presented in

table 1 and table 2 were selected.

Table 1: Selected game Mechanics.

Mechanics. Description (Garcia and Orejuela, 2014)

Classification

tables

Seeks to provide desire for aspiration

and provide a comparison between

groups of children that leads to an

overview of the development of

activities and states of groups of

children.

Benefits

Mechanics that will give the user

motivation through a prize for their

positive participation in the

development of the activity, can be

tangible or virtual.

Levels

These are the indicators that contribute

to recognition once objectives

previously defined by the instructor

have been met. They serve so that the

children are motivated to conquer each

proposed level and can see a clearer

picture of how they are located in the

activity since there is a finite series of

levels

Table 2: Selected game Dynamics.

Dynamics Description (Garcia and Orejuela, 2014)

Reward

It is one of the dynamics of

gamification important to keep children

motivated and committed. Depending

on the behavior or the points it offers

the rewards.

Achievements

Commitment and enthusiasm for

participating in activities. The

achievements can be given at the end of

the activities and can be points, medals.

Competition

Competition generates an increase in

the enthusiasm to finish tasks before

others, to earn points, other

recognitions to be in first places.

3.2.2 Phase Game

In this phase of the rounds, which includes the cycle

of the strategy of the plan, the strategy of the game,

the budget and the strategy of the examination.

During this phase the children designed and

developed their task tables, in the same way they

defined the strategy to execute the challenges and

develop the applications. For each achievement of a

task received points, which are positioned in the

classification table of the gamitool. See figure 5.

Figure 6: Task boards.

The task board was very important for the

control and evaluation of the strategy of the work

teams.

On the other hand, teams received benefits and

points for helping other teams, which allowed the

collaboration that was intended to be achieved

internally in a team, transcending achieving a

collaboration in the classroom.

3.2.3 Post-game Phase

During this phase the children delivered their

mission and the teacher evaluated the software

products, and the points and benefits gained as a

team were analyzed, to later collect the information

that motivated the following programming

challenges. See figure 6 and 7.

Figure 7: Children Programming.

IDEE 2018 - Special Session on Interaction Design in Educational Environments

798

Figure 8: Challenge programming.

4 RESULTS

Table 3 presents the preliminary assessment of the

work teams that was carried out at the beginning of

the research in the first case study applying the

model Childprogramming, Table 4, shows the

assessment of work teams performed in one of the

last study of case using the model

Childprogramming - G, and giving greater relevance

to the dynamics and mechanical of game.

Comparing the tables can be seen a significant

improvement in the evaluation of the characteristics

of the collaboration, being the individual

responsibility and the work of the leader the

valuations that have varied significantly.

Table 3: Preliminary evaluation of the work teams - First

case study.

Characteristics of the collaboration

Teams

Positive

Interdependence

Equal

participation

Individual

responsibility

Definition of

strategy

Work of the

leader

E1 3 2 3 1 2

E2 3 2 1 1 3

E3 4 2 3 2 4

E4 3 3 2 2 3

E5 2 2 2 2 1

Table 4: Final evaluation of the work teams - Case study

with dynamics and game mechanics.

Characteristics of the collaboration

Teams

Positive

Interdependence

Equal

participation

Individual

responsibility

Definition of

strategy

Work of the

leader

5 4 4 3 4

4 4 5 3 5

4 3 5 2 5

5 5 5 5 5

3 4 5 3 3

The leaders of the teams said that the dynamics and

game mechanics were a great tool to motivate their

work teams to stay united, and concentrated during

the development of the challenges.

It is worth noting that the motivation for self-

learning was also evidenced, because the desire to

win the challenges to the children to see the teacher

busy answering doubts of other groups, seek help in

video tutorials, forums and other pages of Scratch,

not to depend so much of the teacher and to be able

to advance in the search of its objectives.

5 CONCLUSIONS

The dynamics and game mechanics were

fundamental for children's teams to see the software

development process as a game. Gamification

improved the performance of the equipment and the

collaboration between its members.

One of the key elements to improve the

characteristics of collaborative work during the

software in different devices, was the task board that

allowed the follow-up and evaluation of tasks to be

performed, tasks in progress and Tasks done. In the

same way, gamification through the allocation of

points motivated students throughout the

development of their programming challenges.

For this type of activities, it is fundamental that

teachers and researchers make a correct definition

and planning of the dynamics and mechanics of

play, because the learning process is accelerated

when a team starts to earn points and others are

motivated not to stay behind.

Working in the strengthening of the collaborative

component of the Childprogramming model, it is

possible to consolidate a software development

model that, in addition to contributing to the

development of children's computational thinking,

Analyzing Collaboration in the Gamiﬁcation Process of Childprogramming

799

improves communication, self-learning,

participation, and commitment among members of

the teams.

As future work in Childprogramming - C, we

will continue in the design and mode-ling of the

process from the collaboration engineering, in the

same way we will follow the collaborative processes

generated when the children program in different

devices such as laptop, mobile devices and smart

boards.

REFERENCES

Beza, O. (2011). Gamification – How games can level up

our everyday life. VU University. Amsterdam.

Collazos, C. A., Guerrero, L. A., Pino, J. A., Renzi, S.,

Klobas, J., Ortega M., Redondo, M. A. and Bravo, C.

(2007). Evaluating collaborative learning processes

using system-based measurement. In Educational

Technology and Society, 10(3), pages 257–274.

Collazos, C. A. and Mendoza, J. (2006). How to take

advantage of cooperative learning in the classroom. In

Educación y Educadores, Volumen 9, pages 61–76.

Cruz, S. T. and Rojas, O. E. (2013). Un Modelo Para la

Enseñanza de la Programación de Software en niños a

través de Estrategias Colaborativas. Popayán:

Universidad del Cauca.

Deterding, S., Dixon, D., Khaled, R., Nacke, L. (2011).

From Game Design Elements to Gamefulness:

Defining Gamification. In Proceedings of the 2011

annual conference extended abstracts on Human

factors in computing systems - CHI EA ’11, Tampere,

Finland, pages 24-25.

Garcia, A. A. and Orejuela, H. (2014) ChildProgramming-

G: Extendiendo ChildProgramming con Técnicas de

Gamificación. Popayán Universidad del Cauca.

Gómez M., and Izuzquiza D. (2007) Tecnología y

aprendizaje colaborativo en el diseño de materiales

para desarrollo del pensamiento abstracto en didáctica

de las matemáticas. In Revista latinoamericana de

Tecnología Educativa, pages 233–250.

Hagglund, P. (2012) Taking gamification to the next level,

UMEA University.

Hurtado, J. A., Collazos, C. A., Cruz, S., Rojas, O. (2012).

Child Programming: Una Estrategia de Aprendizaje y

Construcción de Software Basada en la Lúdica, la

Colaboración y la Agilidad. In Revista Universitaria

RUTIC, 1, pages 9–14.

Hurtado, J. and Collazos, C. (2014). Analyzing and

Evaluating Collaborative Processes using Case Studies

in the Software Development Context. Proceedings of

the XV International Conference on Human Computer

Interaction, pages 1–2.

Johnson, D. W. and Johnson, R. T. (1994). Learning

together and alone Cooperative, Competitive, and

Individualistic Learning. 2nd ed. Englewood Cliffs,

NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Jurado, J. L. and Collazos, C. A. (2013).La mejora de

procesos en la gestión de proyectos , una perspectiva

desde la Ingeniería de la Colaboración. Ingenium,

7(15), pages 51–59.

Kolfschoten, G. L., Briggs, R. O., Vreede, G., Jacobs, P.

H. M., Appelman, J. H. (2006). A conceptual

foundation of the thinkLet concept for Collaboration

Engineering. In International Journal of Human

Computer Studies, 64(7), pages 611–621. doi:

10.1016/j.ijhcs.2006.02.002.

Lee, J., and Hammer, J. (2011). Gamification in education:

What, how, why bother? Academic exchange

quarterly. Vol. 15, Nº. 2, 2011, pages 146.

Mendoza, P. and Galvis, P. (1998). Juegos Multiplayer:

Juegos Colaborativos Para La Educación. In

Informática Educativa, 11(2), pages 223–239.

Runeson, P. and Höst, M. (2009). Guidelines for

conducting and reporting case study research in

software engineering. In Empirical Software

Engineering. doi: 10.1007/s10664-008-9102-8.

Sheingold, K. and Pae R. (1987) Mirrors of Minds:

Patterns of Experience in Educational Computing.

US:Ablex Publishing Corporation.

Sridharan, M., Hrishikesh, A. and Sunali L. (2012). An

academic analysis of Gamification. In UX Magazine:

pages 1-13.

Turban, E. (1995). Management Support System, Decision

Support and Expert System. New Jersey, Prentice Hall,

1995, pages 10-127.

De Vreede, G. J. and Briggs, R. O. (2005). Collaboration

Engineering: Designing Repeatable Processes for

High-Value Collaborative Tasks. Proceedings of the

38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on

System Sciences, 0(C), pages 17-18.

De Vreede, G. J., Briggs, R. O. and Massey, A. P. (2009)

.Collaboration engineering: foundations and

opportunities. In Journal of the Association for

Information Systems, 10(3), pages 2-18.

IDEE 2018 - Special Session on Interaction Design in Educational Environments

800