| Abstrakt: |
Object oriented programming (OOP) is a complex domain in the education field and requires proper technological underpinning for the facilitation of the process. However, the vast variety of available programming environments makes the selection of the most efficient technology that will cover students' needs and will lead to the teachers' desired learning outcomes a significant challenge. These technologies, such as Educational Programming Environments and Programming Microworlds, are often applied on OOP courses in order to underpin the process and help students develop internal incentives, thus foster the feeling of challenge, curiosity, active control and imagination. However, students of the 21st century are growing up in a fully digital world and therefore learn and react accordingly. Alongside the growth of the Internet, high speed access and virtual communities have contributed to a new trend development called online gaming. Therefore, computer games can be considered an appropriate means to deliver knowledge to students of most courses and increase their motivation to learn. A term that is often used when referring to computer games incorporated in the learning experience is "serious games", and they can involve one or multiple players. Serious games have a higher learning value when they are used in courses that consider critical thinking, group work and decision making as essential to be developed. Therefore, it is the paper's initial intent to examine representative examples of commonly used technologies in OOP education and to derive their most prominent features that support students' successful learning experience. To this end, we carry out a theoretical research of the literature regarding Educational Programming Environments and Programming Microworlds in OOP education, as well as serious games in OOP or in computer programming in general following a concept-centric methodological approach. These concepts consist of the most prominent functionalities supported by representative technologies in the three categories. This leads to the conclusion that even serious games can enable and foster the development of skills and personal characteristics through the underpinning of group collaboration towards the motivated fulfilment of given tasks within highly interactive environments that simulate worlds and situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
