Developing an Educational Game to support Cognitive Learning

Abstract

This paper outlines how an educational game can be used to support the learning of programming within the Computer Science (CS) discipline and reports on the qualitative results of a series of rigorous studies conducted through using this game on first year introductory programming students. Although this paper applies to the CS discipline computational thinking (CT) is an intrinsic part of the games process applicable to any discipline. This is because CT is a problem solving approach which combines logical thinking with CS concepts to produce a recipe for solving problems in any discipline regardless of where the problem lies.