Authors:
Daniela Tuparova
1
;
Emilia Nikolova
2
and
Elena Tuparova
3
Affiliations:
1
Department of Informatics, South-West University Neofit Rilski, 66 Ivan Mihaylov Str, Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria
;
2
High School for Mathematics and Natural Science, 4 Maritsa, Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria
;
3
Sirma AI trading as Ontotext, 135 Tsarigradsko Shose Bul, Sofia, Bulgaria
Keyword(s):
Game based Education, Introductory in Programming, Secondary School, Boys and Girls Differences, K-8.
Abstract:
Informatics subject is a compulsory course for Bulgarian high school students with specialisation in Computer Science, Mathematics, and Natural sciences. The subject starts in 8th grade and in fact it is an introductory course in programming. According to the national syllabus of the subject, teachers can choose one of the following programming languages: C#, Visual Basic or Java. The content of the course is too abstract for the 14 years old students. To reduce the level of abstraction and to motivate the students we implemented integrated game based model for teaching programming. The model is based on usage of educational computer games for introduction of main concepts, experimenting with already developed games, usage of “half baked” tasks and programming of games. Also, game based approach is combined with problem solving, project based and e-learning approaches and technologies. The implementation of integrated game based model was experimented with 126 8th graders at Mathemat
ics and Natural Sciences High School. In this paper we analyse and compare the achievements of the boys and girls that participated in experimental training. Also the achievements of the students from the experimental group are compared with achievements of students from the same school that have not been trained with the discussed approach. This group is used as control group. Boys and girls that have been taught according to the proposed model show the same achievements. The statistically significant difference exists between achievements of girls form experimental and control group. Girls from experimental group demonstrate higher achievements in programming and practical problem solving than girls from control group. Also the boys trained via integrated game based approach have higher results than boys in control group. The obtained results show that the implementation of integrated game-based learning influences the performance of both boys and girls in a positive manner.
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