Background

Despite the increase in the number of software developers in Europe, the demand still surpasses the supply and this situation is not likely to change in near future. Unfortunately, a known barrier to increasing this supply is the difficulty of learning and teaching to program. This barrier can be mitigated by (1) easing the learning process, by providing interactive learning environments; (2) easing the teaching process, by providing teachers with tools for preparing interactive teaching materials, and (3) using techniques that increase students’ motivation and engagement to continue learning to program. All these three needs were partially addressed by the FGPE project [https://fgpe.usz.edu.pl], in which a technological base enabling the gamification of programming education has been developed, including: a general scheme and format for gamified exercises, open-source tools for editing and playing with the exercises, and a set of such exercises. Towards the end of its implementation, we noticed the shortcomings of the FGPE platform, namely that it is separate from LMS used by HEIs and is difficult to be used on mobile devices. In response, in the FGPE Plus project [https://fgpeplus.usz.edu.pl/]: the support of the LTI standard has been added to the FGPE ecosystem, allowing students to be redirected to solve exercises in FGPE platform with their results automatically sent back to LMS, the FGPE learning platform has been reimplemented as a Progressive Web Application, to improve the user experience of mobile users, and an interactive tutorial has been added to the teacher’s user interface to guide those trying to develop their gamified courses. The current proposal aims to address problems identified during the realization of FGPE Plus project. First, we noticed teachers are still reluctant to gamify their programming lessons as they lack time and/or creative skills to design the gamification layer. Second, the power of mobile learning is it can be done anywhere. In the current FGPE platform, the “anywhere” is limited to where Internet is accessible. In many low-populated areas, including those which trains only pass by, the Internet connection is of very poor quality or sometimes unavailable, leading the users to frustration which may contribute to their stopping learning. Third, what the support for LTI enabled, has not yet been fully consumed, as so far only mini-courses primarily testing this capability were developed, because the effort needed to develop a full-fledged course was beyond the limited resources of the FGPE Plus project.

In the ongoing Framework for Gamified Programming Education (FGPE) project, we developed a technological base enabling the gamification of programming education, including: a general scheme and format for gamified exercises, open-source tools for editing and playing with the exercises, and a set of such exercises.

Background

Despite the increase in the number of software developers in Europe, the demand still surpasses the supply and this situation is not likely to change in near future. Unfortunately, a known barrier to increasing this supply is the difficulty of learning and teaching to program.

This barrier can be mitigated by (1) easing the learning process, by providing interactive learning environments; (2) easing the teaching process, by providing teachers with tools for preparing interactive teaching materials, and (3) using techniques that increase students’ motivation and engagement to continue learning to program.

All these three needs were partially addressed by the FGPE project [https://fgpe.usz.edu.pl], in which a technological base enabling the gamification of programming education has been developed, including: a general scheme and format for gamified exercises, open-source tools for editing and playing with the exercises, and a set of such exercises. Towards the end of its implementation, we noticed the shortcomings of the FGPE platform, namely that it is separate from LMS used by HEIs and is difficult to be used on mobile devices.

In response, in the FGPE Plus project [https://fgpeplus.usz.edu.pl/]: the support of the LTI standard has been added to the FGPE ecosystem, allowing students to be redirected to solve exercises in FGPE platform with their results automatically sent back to LMS, the FGPE learning platform has been reimplemented as a Progressive Web Application, to improve the user experience of mobile users, and an interactive tutorial has been added to the teacher’s user interface to guide those trying to develop their gamified courses. The current proposal aims to address problems identified during the realization of FGPE Plus project. First, we noticed teachers are still reluctant to gamify their programming lessons as they lack time and/or creative skills to design the gamification layer. Second, the power of mobile learning is it can be done anywhere. In the current FGPE platform, the “anywhere” is limited to where Internet is accessible. In many low-populated areas, including those which trains only pass by, the Internet connection is of very poor quality or sometimes unavailable, leading the users to frustration which may contribute to their stopping learning. Third, what the support for LTI enabled, has not yet been fully consumed, as so far only mini-courses primarily testing this capability were developed, because the effort needed to develop a full-fledged course was beyond the limited resources of the FGPE Plus project.