Review of the Adaptability of a Set of Learning Games Meant for

Teaching Computational Thinking or Programming in France

Hajar Saddoug

, Aryan Rahimian

, Bertrand Marne

, Mathieu Muratet

, Karim Sehaba

and Sébastien Jolivet

Sorbonne Université, Place Jussieu, Paris, France

ICAR UMR 5191, Université Lumière Lyon 2, Parvis René Descartes, Lyon, France

Sorbonne Université, CNRS, INS HEA, LIP6, F-75005 Paris, France

LIRIS - Université Lumière Lyon 2, avenue Pierre Mendès-France, Lyon, France

IUFE, Université de Genève, rue du Général-Dufour, Genève, Switzerland

Mathieu.Muratet@lip6.fr, karim.sehaba@liris.cnrs.fr, Sebastien.jolivet@unige.ch

Keywords: Serious Games, Meta-design, Instrumental Genesis, Computational Thinking, Programming.

Abstract: Our work is part of a broader research project on how French teachers and trainers can appropriate learning

games dedicated to computer science and programming. To foster this appropriation, we aim to implement a

meta-design approach that favours instrumental genesis. In this article, we describe our review of a selection

of learning games to identify whether they are suitable for this approach. We introduce a set of rather generic

and reusable criteria to characterize the instrumentalization of serious games. With these criteria we

thoroughly review 10 games among 48 selected. Thus, for each game selected, the identified criteria point out

the availability of means and tools allowing teachers and trainers to understand the game, but they also assess

adaptability of the latter in relation to pedagogical needs. Our results show that the adaptability of most of

these 10 games remains weak and out of reach for many teachers and trainers. Indeed, none of the reviewed

games were able to meet the requirements set out in the framework of the meta-design approach.

1 INTRODUCTION

In our research context, education in France, the

question of computer science education dates back to

the 1970s and is characterized by a balance between

two conceptions of what should be taught. On the one

hand, there is the idea of teaching IT and computer

science as a tool. On the other hand, the idea of

computer science as an academic subject, with its

own concepts and methods to be taught (Baron &

Drot-Delange, 2016). After its demise years ago,

computer science has made a comeback in French

school curricula, where it is referred to as

“computational thinking”. According to Jeannette

Wing, computational thinking involves five cognitive

abilities: (1) algorithmic thinking, (2) abstraction, (3)

evaluation, (4) decomposition, and (5) generalization

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4953-9360

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6101-5132

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6541-1877

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3915-8465

(Wing, 2006). The French researcher Gilles Dowek

(Dowek, 2011) has structured computer science into

four concepts so that the content taught provides an

accurate picture of the discipline itself: (1) digital

information, (2) algorithms, (3) languages, and (4)

computing machines. Thus, computer science is not

reduced to coding, which constitutes only the final

phase of the translation into a programming language.

Conceived in such a fashion, computer science leaves

the status of a tool for what it really is: a science with

its own specificities and requiring it’s a proper

learning process. However, teaching computational

thinking in France at both elementary and high school

levels requires a major involvement from teachers

(Kradolfer et al., 2014) in order to tackle this new

discipline, due to a lack of training (both pre-service

and in-service).

562

Saddoug, H., Rahimian, A., Marne, B., Muratet, M., Sehaba, K. and Jolivet, S.

Review of the Adaptability of a Set of Learning Games Meant for Teaching Computational Thinking or Programming in France.

DOI: 10.5220/0011126400003182

In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2022) - Volume 1, pages 562-569

ISBN: 978-989-758-562-3; ISSN: 2184-5026

Alongside these changes in computer science

teaching, serious learning games have emerged and

offer many advantages over traditional teaching tools.

Indeed, many authors consider serious learning

games as promising, especially for increasing

learners’ engagement and motivation (Bouvier et al.,

2014; Garris et al., 2002; Keller, 1995; Malone &

Lepper, 2005; Prensky, 2004), while others consider

these tools to foster a more constructivist learning

(Bogost, 2007, 2013; Brunet et al., 2020; Gee, 2009;

Ryan et al., 2012). Regarding teaching computer

science and programming, many serious games exist

(Miljanovic & Bradbury, 2018; Vahldick et al.,

2014), but their appropriation by teachers remains

scarce. To tackle this issue, we make the hypothesis

that a participatory design method such as meta-

design could be suitable because it is promoting

instrumental genesis (Rabardel, 1995, 2003). Meta-

design is an advanced participatory design method, in

which the end users (“owners of problems”), in our

case the teachers, are intimately involved in the initial

design phases. But, and that is the reason for meta-

design relevance in solving appropriation problems,

users must also have the means to continue to act as

designers during the use phases of the artefacts. It is

possible, thanks to underdesign, which Fischer et al.

(Fischer et al., 2004) define as: “[…] underdesign

aims to provide social and technical instruments for

the owners of problems to create the solutions [of

their problems] themselves at use time”. Therefore, in

our case, the goal is to identify how teachers and

trainers, who are the end users of serious games

dedicated to programming, manage to take part in a

meta-design approach through the

instrumentalization of the artefact.

Nevertheless, in order to implement this meta-

design approach, it is necessary to have flexible

artefacts (in our case, serious games) providing

functionalities allowing these end users (teachers or

trainers) to monitor their use at different levels of

abstraction and to adapt them accordingly, taking into

account their context and needs. In this article, we

carry out a review of learning games on computer

thinking with a focus on the tools made available to

promote the instrumental genesis and appropriation

of these games by teachers. The goal is to assess

adaptability of each of the games reviewed through a

meta-design approach.

In the first part, we present our methodology, i.e.

how we developed our assessment criteria, how we

constructed our selection of games to be assessed and

how we conducted the review. In the second part, we

present and discuss the results of this review, before

concluding in the last part.

2 METHODOLOGY

There are already several reviews of serious games

for programming in the literature. Among the

research that we have been able to consult, we have

noticed that the focus is mainly on the content and the

skills taught by the serious games reviewed (Lindberg

et al., 2019; Malliarakis et al., 2014; Miljanovic &

Bradbury, 2018; Vahldick et al., 2014). According to

some of these studies, such as Lindberg et al.

(Lindberg et al., 2019), there is a poor alignment

between the skills taught in serious games (29 were

reviewed) and those taught in the curricula

(particularly in French). This tendency is also found

in Malliarakis et al. and Miljanovic and Bradbury

(Malliarakis et al., 2014; Miljanovic & Bradbury,

2018), with respectively 12 and 49 games assessed

(and many overlaps between these studies). However,

these works never identified the possibility of an

instrumental genesis, for instance through

instrumentalization. Only Vahldick et al. (Vahldick et

al., 2014) discuss the importance that editors tools can

play in specific cases, yet without making it a

criterion for their review (40 games reviewed).

Therefore, we conducted our own review by

focusing on the ability of appraised games to have, on

the one hand, monitoring capabilities that allow the

teacher to understand how the game is used and, on

the other hand, adaptation capabilities that allow the

teacher to modify the game according to the results of

the monitoring.

2.1 Learning Games Selection

To compile a list of games related to computational

thinking for review, we combined the games we had

already identified in other research (Marne, Muratet,

et al., 2021; Marne, Sehaba, et al., 2021), with those

from the above-mentioned systematic reviews, and

with others searched on the web. We only retained

serious games that are currently functional (for

example, games using Flash technology are now very

difficult to use), affordable or free. As a result, we

have been able to identify 48 games that can be used

to learn to code or computational thinking (Table 1).

We focus on serious games intended for learning

computer science and programming in a school

context, so we chose to exclude games with no real

access to programming by the player, as well as those

only available on mobile phones or tablets (restricted

in French schools). We also merged the games with

similar features to Scratch (Resnick et al., 2009) or

Blockly (Fraser, 2015), both of which are microworlds

Review of the Adaptability of a Set of Learning Games Meant for Teaching Computational Thinking or Programming in France

563

Table 1: Initial list of 48 games, the 10 selected games are highlighted.

Algoblocs Code hunt CodeWars Elevator Saga Hocus Focus Pyrates

SQL Murder

Mystery

AlgoPython Code Moji Codin’Game Empire Of Code

Human Resource

Machine

RoboCode StarLogo

Bee Bot Code Monkey Collabots Flexbox Defense Imagi Ruby Warrior Tynker

Blockly Code Monster Compute It Flexbox Froggy KoduGame Run Marco Unruly Splats

Ceebot CodeCombat CSS Diner Gladiabots

Le chevalier de la

programmation

Scratch Untrusted

CheckIO Codefi Cyber Dojo Grid Garden Pixel Screeps Vim adventures

Code CodeGym Duskers Heartbreak ProgAndPlay SPY

(Papert, 1987) offering programming with blocks of

instructions.

Then, we filtered the list of games, while sorting and

categorizing the games by considering the following

characteristics:

 Similarities and differences between the

games

;

 Advantages and disadvantages of the tools

available within or with the games;

 Categories (e.g. age, field, cost);

 Type of training (when provided by the game):

self-training, traditional training, etc.

This classification allowed us to refine the list to

focus on a selection of 10 games (out of 48) that have

little in common and that corresponds well to our

objective: to identify serious games focused on

learning computer thinking and programming that

could be adapted or easily appropriated by teachers

and trainers, i.e. allowing the implementation of a

meta-design context. Henceforth, each game selected

for review is associated with a separate category.

2.2 Preparation of the Assessment

Framework

In order to establish our assessment framework, we

identified several criteria. First, we identified three

stages related to the possible adaptations that could be

made by teachers or trainers to the listed games. For

each of these three stages (before, during and after),

we identified, as a criterion, specific types of support

to adaptation:

 Before Adaptation: availability of tutorials

and explanations in different formats,

regarding how to handle the game and/or how

to use it for other training purposes.

 During Adaptation: ability to check for errors

during the game modification.

 After Adaptation: availability of an overview

of the modifications made to the game and/or

the presence of additional help (human or

interactive digital maintenance such as forums,

FAQs, etc.)

Furthermore, as a follow-up to this preparatory step,

we defined more refined and easily measurable

criteria. These criteria are detailed in the next section.

2.3 Refined Criteria for the Review

The purpose of this study is not to highlight some of

the serious games and disqualify others. The purpose

is to review the serious games, to sort them out with

fine-grained criteria, in order to provide a clear

framework covering both convergences and

divergences among the adaptable serious games

dedicated to the teaching of programming or

computational thinking.

Given its subjectivity, we were reluctant to use a

score system, especially as the main point of our

framework was to indicate the actual availability of

the defined criterion. Accordingly, we referred to the

criterion as “available” or “not available”, and in the

case of availability, we always comment on how the

criterion is provided. However, for one of the criteria,

the “Extent” of the scenario, we had to be able to be

more precise, without going into too much detail for

a quick analysis. Therefore, we settled on 3 possible

states: small, wide or no scenario.

Once criteria were identified during our

explorations, we decided to classify them. We

identified 7 classes, each with different criteria, which

are overviewed in Table 2.

GonCPL 2022 - Special Session on Gamiﬁcation on Computer Programming Learning

564

Table 2: Overview of the 7 classes of criteria used in our review.

Classes Related Criteria

Adaptability Open Source Code, Teacher Profile, HMI Modification, Interaction Types.

Editing Modifying Tasks, Adding Tasks, Planning Tasks, Creating Scenarios, Editor Provided

Training Ability Guidelines (for playing), Pedagogical Guidelines (for editing), Didactic Support, Pedagogical Support

Monitoring Progress, Performance, Background Information, Log Formats

CS Specific Programming Languages

Community User Forum, Author/Publisher Contact Information

Scenario Extent, Stand-Alone Tasks

Adaptability is a crucial class of criteria for our

framework, describing the ability of the game to be

modified. It is broken down into 4 criteria:

 Open Source Code: we checked the availability of

the source code, its licence, and the availability of

any digital resources that have been used.

 Teacher Profile: we checked whether a specific

account and profile exist for trainers or teachers,

giving access to specific features (creating

lessons, planning them, viewing logs, scores,

etc.).

 HMI Modification: we checked whether the

game's interface could be modified.

 Interaction Types: we checked whether it was

possible to modify the existing interactions in the

game (e.g. using other devices than the keyboard

and mouse).

The Editing class is distinguished from the

Adaptability class, being narrower in scope and

focusing on game content (task and scenario)

modification. Its criteria are:

 Modifying Tasks: the ability to modify the content

of an existing task, a level, its difficulty level, etc.

 Adding Tasks: the ability to add tasks to the

game’s original ones.

 Planning Tasks: the ability to reorder existing or

self-created tasks (where possible), to allow for

the creation of a new scenario.

 Creating Scenarios: the ability to create a

sequence of tasks.

 Editor Provided: whether an authoring tool is

provided to support creation, modification and

planning tasks.

For the purposes of our research, we introduced

another class of criteria that we consider crucial:

Training Ability. The purpose of this class is to

identify, for instance, whether the system trains the

teacher, or helps him or her to teach programming.

Does the system clearly tell teachers what they can do

with it? If it does, then how? Does the system

provides feedback to the teachers during instructional

design? Does the system provides suitable activities

related to the concepts targeted? In other words, we

need to pinpoint any information or means enabling

teachers to get to grips with the system and to teach

with it. It should be done by them either before

implementing and editing a lesson in the system, or

even during its previous design. In this class, we

identified 4 criteria:

 Guidelines (for playing): describes whether

information is available that may contribute to a

better understanding and a proper handling of the

game.

 Pedagogical Guidelines (for editing): describes

whether information is available that may

contribute to understanding how to teach

effectively with the system.

 Didactic Support: describes whether there are any

means to help teachers to better teach the targeted

concepts (e.g. by providing suitable assignments).

 Pedagogical Support: describes whether there is a

support system that helps teachers implement

efficient courses in the game.

Thanks to the Monitoring class, we provide

several criteria to describe the means made available

to collect, consult and analyse logs of the learners’

actions in the game. Indeed, an adaptation of a game

by teachers or trainers is often triggered by

discrepancies between the expected behaviours (of

the learner-players) during the design stage of the

game and the actual practices that may arise during

the use stage. Such discrepancies are only perceptible,

in some cases, through the implementation of a

monitoring system, which logs interactions between

users and the game. The logs collected can be

transformed in order to reveal indicators, with a high

level of abstraction, that might support teachers in

making the necessary adaptations to ensure the

learning process runs smoothly.

This class is related to Training Ability and

Adaptability (more specifically the criterion Teacher

Profile). Indeed, access to the logs requires a

dedicated teacher interface. The criteria of this class

are:

 Progress: identifies the availability of logs

(indicators) of learners’ progress in the game

(levels completed, unlocked, levels replayed,

etc.).

Review of the Adaptability of a Set of Learning Games Meant for Teaching Computational Thinking or Programming in France

565

 Performance: identifies the availability of logs

(indicators) showing the performance of each

learner (scores, badges earned, etc.).

 Background Information: identifies the

availability of individual learner information

(names, numbers, class, group, etc.).

 Log Formats: describes the formats of the

provided logs (raw or refined). We distinguish

between refined format, i.e. information

collected and presented with the aim of

informing the user about the logs, and raw

format, i.e. partial information that may be

scattered throughout the system.

The Community class has only two criteria. The

first is the availability of User Forums and the second

is the availability of Contact Information for the

authors or the publisher of the game. We added this

class to show whether external help might be

available to teachers or trainers who would like to

undertake editing the game.

The Scenario class is used to establish whether

there is a scenario in the game, and if this scenario

leaves the game tasks independent of each other. The

2 criteria are:

 Extent: indicates the extent of the scenario or

narrative, i.e. the importance of a story or a

background that links the different individual

steps of the game (levels, stages, assignments,

etc.) to each other. This criterion can have 3

values (wide, small, no scenario).

 Stand-Alone Tasks: indicates how dependent

the tasks (the units that constitute the scenario)

are. With an extensive scenario, we will

consider the dependency of the tasks. For

instance, can the tasks be modified separately

without affecting the overall scenario?

There is one remaining criterion that could not be

classified elsewhere: Programming Languages. This

criterion is used to indicate whether the game allows

the use of one or more programming languages. We

have not included it in the Editing class, because it is

about the language used for playing the game and not

for editing it. We therefore propose a CS (Computer

Science) Specific class. This class is the only class

that is specific to games dedicated to learning

computational thinking and programming.

Indeed, all the other classes above-mentioned

contain criteria that are well suitable to review

adaptability for any other kind of serious games.

2.4 Review Process

To review each game, we proceeded as follows: first,

the same game was reviewed by two reviewers

separately, note-taking the relevant information. In a

second step, a synthetic table was filled in jointly. The

time allowed for the review was different for each

game. Thus, we noticed that, depending on the type

of game, the average time for a full review was one

hour. For some games, given their simplicity or

minimalist interface, the review process was

significantly shorter.

The review process required more than just

playing the game, it also required time for the

reviewers to get to grips with it and master it: reading

guides, watching tutorials before playing, and testing

the level editor when available. This analysis was

characterized by a “meta-playing” approach, in which

the reviewers had to be aware of the game and of

themselves as players during the act of playing. This

attitude is necessary for the reviewers to identify pros

and cons of each game and to see, as they proceed,

the similarities and differences between the games.

The review was carried out by class of criteria,

and as soon as all the cells in a class were filled in, the

reviewer moved on to the next class in the table. For

some classes, such as Adaptability and Community,

the reviewer had to spend more time than others, as

additional research, especially on the web. For

instance, the availability of open source code, the

presence of forums dedicated to the game or any

additional information present on users’ blogs.

For each class, a comment column has been added

to the table to provide additional information on the

availability of certain criteria, but also to add specifics

found in the game.

3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Due to lack of space, we only included an excerpt of

the synthetic review table of the 10 selected games in

this paper in the appendix below (Table 3).

Concerning the class Adaptability, we noticed that

many games have an Open Source Code (6/10) which

is a positive element to support their modification.

However, in the current selection, only a few games

(3/10) provide specific interfaces for teachers

(Teacher Profile). Among the games, the available

features are very different: Algoblocs allows teachers

to publish challenges or to enable/disable comments

and forum options; AlgoPython allows teachers to

create classes and assign students to them; finally, the

game Code allows teachers to plan their courses, to

structure them into units and chapters. The last two

criteria of the class Adaptability are scarce. None of

the games studied provide the possibility of

modifying the game interface and only KoduGame

GonCPL 2022 - Special Session on Gamiﬁcation on Computer Programming Learning

566

allows the use of interaction peripherals other than the

keyboard/mouse pair.

Regarding the class Editing, most games do not

give any control over the scenario, some only allow

the player to unlock the levels as they progress. Two

games stand out: SPY and KoduGame. The first

provides an option to add/remove/modify levels in the

scenario by editing XML files. The latter allows

teachers to create worlds in which they can define

tasks, organize them, and specify assignments.

Nevertheless, we noticed that in Code, tasks (called

units) can be assigned to a course, but their content

cannot be modified or reorganized.

For the class Training Ability, 6 games out of 10

provide guidelines and only 3 (Code, PyRates and

Ceebot) are accompanied by pedagogical guidelines

that provide information on the concepts covered by

the game. The last two criteria in this class are

dependent on the possibility to create/modify a task.

Neither of the two games identified in the Editing

class offers means to assist the teacher on either the

pedagogical or didactic aspects.

Three games stand out in the class Monitoring

(AlgoPython, CodinGame and Algoblocs). The

players’ actions are logged to provide teachers with

dashboards displaying progress and performance

indicators. Unfortunately, none of the games allows

access to the data logged, preventing customized

processing/analysis.

For the class CS Specific, only one game offers the

player the possibility to manipulate several

programming languages: CodinGame. It offers only

text-based languages (no block-based languages), but

several programming paradigms are possible, such as

object-oriented, functional and imperative

approaches. Therefore, teachers are free to choose

their language from a wide range of 27 different

programming languages.

Finally, the class Scenario shows us that most of

the games (7/10) offer some kind of scenarios that

links the different levels of the game. These links can

be independent of the content of the tasks, as in

PyRates, where the levels are structured by a back

story including a theme and characters, but where

each level can also be played independently of the

other levels.

4 CONCLUSIONS

The research presented in this paper is part of the

general problem of the appropriation of serious

learning games dedicated to computational thinking

and programming by teachers and trainers. More

precisely, we seek to define how adaptable and

flexible each game is in order to promote the meta-

design approach and thus the instrumentalization

dimension of the instrumental genesis.

This paper presents preliminary work on

identifying criteria for assessing the adaptability of

serious games. It also presents a review based on

these criteria carried out on a selection of such serious

learning games.

We introduce a review framework with 7 classes

with between 1 and 5 criteria. Each class describes a

component of adaptability for potential users with

diverse profiles, ranging from a primary school

teacher who is new to computing to an experienced

computer scientist. With the exception of one of the

classes and its associated criterion specific to

computational thinking and programming (diversity

of choice in programming languages), we believe that

one of the main contributions of this work is to

provide a structured set of adaptability review criteria

that can be reused for any type of serious learning

game.

We identified 48 games designed for learning

computational thinking and programming. We made

a selection of 10 games on which we used our review

framework.

Thanks to this review of the ten selected games

according to our criteria, we have shown that even if

many of them offer open source code (criterion Open

Source Code), few of them are easily adaptable

(criteria HMI Modification, Interaction Type,

Modifying Tasks, Adding Tasks, Planning Tasks,

Creating Scenarios). When they are possible (e.g.

SPY, PyRates, Kodu Game), the modifications most

often require a good knowledge of programming

(editors are non-existent, except for Kodu Game) and

there are no training resources available to assist in

these modifications.

Beyond the straightforward contributions of this

work (a set of criteria for analysing adaptability that

can be reused in other contexts and its

implementation on reviewing 10 games), these results

allow us to identify that the requirements for having

a game dedicated to learning computational thinking

or programming that allows implementing a meta-

design approach are high and that none of the games

reviewed here fully meet them. Our future research

will therefore be directed towards identifying ways of

making serious games intended for this type of

learning more conducive to the implementation of a

meta-design approach in an effort to foster their

appropriation by teachers and trainers.

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567

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors would like to acknowledge The

University Lumière Lyon 2 for the APPI 2020 Grant.

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APPENDIX

The Table 3 below shows an excerpt of the full

synthetic review table. The comments and some game

metadata (URL and date of visit) are omitted. The full

version of the table is available online:

https://recherche.univ-lyon2.fr/meta-dect/SG_adapta

bility_Review.xlsx

On the table, to save space we replaced

“Available” with “×” and “Not available” or “No

scenario” with blank cells.

Table 3: Excerpt of the full synthetic review table.

Game

Spy

Code

Algopyhton

Pyrates

Codin’ Game

Kodu Game

Robocode

Ceebot

Algoblocks

Compute it

Adaptability

Open Source Code × × × × × ×

Teacher Profile × × ×

HMI Modification

Interaction Types ×

Editing

Modifying Tasks × ×

Adding Tasks × × ×

Planning Tasks × ×

Creatin

Scenarios × ×

Editor Provided ×

Training

Ability

Guidelines (for playing) × × × × × × ×

Pedagogical Guideline (for

editin

)

× × × ×

Didactic Support

Pedagogical Support

Monitoring

Progress × × × × × × ×

Performance × × ×

Background Information × × ×

Log Formats Refined Refined Refined Refined

Specific

Programming Language ×

Community

User Forum × × × × ×

Author/Publisher Contact × × × × × × × × ×

Scenario

Extent Small Small Wide Small Wide Wide Small

Stand-Alone Tasks × × × ×

Review of the Adaptability of a Set of Learning Games Meant for Teaching Computational Thinking or Programming in France

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