EDUCATIONAL SOLUTION
The educational solution should be designed as a learning product to solve the problem that California undergraduate freshmen without any programming experiences having difficulty mastering the knowledge and concepts of Python’s learning. Papastergiou (2009) and Lishinski (2016) specified there should be a transition in students’ CS learning from being extrinsically motivated to intrinsically motivated. As a result, the theoretical framework of this learning product is built based on self-determination theory (SDT) because choosing introjected regulation as regulatory style can successfully achieve the goal of utilizing somewhat external motivation to trigger the positive effects of internal regulation and then intrinsically motivate students to learn the concepts and knowledge of CS.
Furthermore, designing an educational product is more likely to match SDT’s theoretical framework compared to a course paper extension under the context of CS learning. An investigative research showed that most college students preferred learning knowledge and concepts of Python online through websites or software, so designing an learning product would match a large amount of students’ learning habits and adapt contemporary market demand (Watanobe, Intisar, Cortez, & Vazhenin, 2020; Serrano Corkin, Ekmekci, & Fisher, 2020).
This shows that designing a learning product can not only take the advantage of a theoretical framework built based on SDT, but also meet undergraduate freshmen’s learning preference in CS. Therefore, designing an educational product based on SDT’s theoretical framework as the solution can efficiently help California undergraduate freshmen without any programming experiences overcome difficulties of mastering the knowledge and concepts in Python learning.
The learning product should contain gamification in learning to help California undergraduate freshmen without any programming experiences master the knowledge and concepts of Python. The researchers found that gamification well matched the SDT’s theoretical framework because the process of playing a game could make students produce interests which was able to attract them continue engaging in the game playing and the enjoyment could also trigger inherent satisfaction after completing a game round (Wang et al., 2016).
This indicates that playing a game can inspire interest, enjoyment, and inherent satisfaction to intrinsically regulate undergraduate students’ motivation while learning Python. Moreover, the experiment results showed that learning products which included game-based elements such as interaction and story plots could efficiently drive students’ engagement in CS learning. For example, (Hug et al., 2011; Srimadhaven et al., 2020) claimed that including peer leaders who made clear explanations about Python’s learning contents in discussion groups to organize group members could increase students’ engagement in both class and discussion sessions.
This pedagogical approach is especially effective for underrepresented students in the field of computer science because group collaboration could provide targeting support according to different levels of understanding and this learning atmosphere allowed every student to exchange ideas with each other. This indicates that setting NPCs in the game can represent knowledgeable peer leaders because NPCs can provide useful information about Python to California undergraduate freshmen when they make conversations.
Moreover, Costa (2014) and Sotomayor-Beltran (2019) found that building robots scenario in a professional course of Management Informatics increase students’ programming interests. The results of control group experiments showed that adding a scenario in the course can increase students’ interest of working on programming because scenario provided students specific problems of practice about robots that require them apply knowledge and concepts through programming (Roberts, Hann, & Slaughter, 2006; Yassine, Berrada, Tahiri, & Chenouni, 2018).
This implies that adding story plots in the game can simulate scenario, so California undergraduate freshmen’s programming interest is expected to increase, the ability of applying knowledge and concepts in practice can also be improved. In addition, the contents covered in the course can be integrated into the scenario, too. In this way, designing a role-playing game (RPG) game is a good match for the learning product under this context because RPG game can satisfy both the game-based elements of interaction and story plots.
This RPG game should emphasize three major tenants: accessibility, continuity and scenario. The researchers found that students would reject using a learning product if it was too difficult to manage (Radenski, 2008; Law, Lee, & Yu, 2010). This indicates that this RPG game should be directly downloaded through a specific link, so both instructors and California undergraduate freshmen would find it easily accessible to utilize it to learn Python. Moreover, the experiment results proved that students needed time to adapt a new learning mode they would gradually understand its technique after several times of tries (Nuravianty, Santoso, & Junus, 2021).
This means that designing continuous chapters throughout RPG game with consistent rules and style to match all the course contents can help California undergraduate freshmen adapt this new Python game-learning mode as soon as possible. Lastly, Banfield and Wilkerson (2014) found that college students became more engaged in computer science after studying under a context of scenario. This infers that providing specific scenes in the RPG game can guarantee students’ engagement and improve their learning outcomes, so adding story plots and designing the maps, characters and buildings can achieve this goal by providing opportunities to allow California undergraduate freshmen explore this virtual world to get more information about Python learning.
How this RPG game can be implemented in a real situation to support California undergraduate freshmen learning Python can be illustrated as follows: This RPG game is designed to cover all the learning contents of a programming course called ICS 31 from University of California, Irvine (UCI). This RPG game contains prologue, chapter 1 ~10 and two boss raids, each of them represent certain week in the whole semester. The following is a table with course contents by Kay (2017) to show the details.
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Overview of RPG Game’s Contents covered in ICS 31
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Note. Course contents by Kay (2017)
For instance, during the first class of ICS 31 which teaches California undergraduate freshmen Python, the instructor can make an announcement that on Canvas there is a RPG game that can help students to preview and review the Python contents covered in this course and ask every student to complete this game’s prologue in order to meet course requirement. After successfully introducing the RPG game to students, the instructor can say the rest of chapters in this game are not mandatory, but anyone who completes another chapter can gain extra credit. In this case, the course requirement and extra credit are the sources of extrinsic motivation and work somewhat externally.
The regulatory style will be introduced because students are unconsciously mastering the knowledge and concepts covered in the Python course while playing the game in every chapter. Under the effects of external motivations such as successfully transferring majors to CS and finding a high-salary job after graduation, California undergraduate freshmen are willing to continue playing this RPG game to complete the remaining chapters in order to gain extra credits to succeed in Python. As time goes by, California undergraduate freshmen will gradually form interests in this game.
They may not only prefer utilizing this RPG game as a tool to preview and review the knowledge and concepts of Python to prepare for exams, but also enjoy the process of having conversations with knowledgeable NPCs and experiencing the story plot of each scenario. In this way, the internal source intrinsically regulates the motivation to trigger its positive effects and California undergraduate freshmen become interested in keeping playing this RPG game in order to gain inherent satisfaction and enjoyment.
After playing game, California undergraduate freshmen find this is a good way for them to preview and review the contents from course, so both learning outcomes and SDT are expected to increase. Consequently, this RPG game that emphasizes accessibility, continuity and scenario can take advantage of SDT’s theoretical framework to help California undergraduate freshmen without any programming experiences to master the knowledge and concepts of Python and succeed in this course.
Taking Python Impact: Prologue as an example, this RPG game is designed based on the scenario that protagonist, a college freshman from UC, Irvine without any programming experience stepping into the world of Python by accident, now his/her goal is to explore the continents and search for seven keys from the legend. When the seven keys are found and embedded into the slates on the Mountain of Chirekan, the gate to the underworld will open. The protagonist needs to defeat the Lord of Shadow (final Boss) in order to save the world of Python and return to the original world.
At the beginning, instructors will introduce California undergraduate freshmen to play this game as the supplementary tool to help them review the contents in Week 0 in ICS 31 in order to prepare for the upcoming quiz. In this stage, goal of meeting the course requirement is the main factor that externally motivates students to keep playing this game. During the game playing, students will experience: 1) interacting with NPCs (Sager and Lucy) to know the plots of this game; 2) practicing the knowledge and contents learned from lectures by battling with the evil (guard of Abyss Cult) and 3) gaining lessons and support from NPCs when students make the wrong choices.
If students make wrong answers in battle, the NPC will firstly make encouragement and then open the tutorial file or video to allow them review in browser. Students can’t advance the story plots until they master the knowledge and concepts of Python by answering questions correctly in battles, so this rule can promise that students learn Python through this game. When California undergraduate freshmen pass Prologue’s test, they can unlock Chapter 1 and so on. After being able to apply all the knowledge and contents of Python covered in ICS 31 through the adventure in this game, the protagonist finally collects the 7 keys and open the gate to underworld. In the end, the protagonist defeats the Lord of Shadow which is designed as a review to prepare final exam and saves the world of Python.
According to the SDT model, California undergraduate freshmen are expected to show the effect of being motivated internally to learn Python after playing six chapters in Python Impact. The attractive story plots, exquisite game style and interesting gameplay can all work together to catalyze the process of transition from being extrinsically motivated to intrinsically motivated. This means that introjected regulation plays a role in students’ learning when students start being interested in Python through Python Impact, and California undergraduate freshmen are fully internally motivated to learn programming when they fall in love the way of coding and self-satisfaction is achieved.
Although the strengths and feasibility of this learning product have been discussed in previous sections, it is still necessary to acknowledge its potential limitations. First of all, it is difficult to guarantee that every student would be satisfied with the artwork and paintings that appear in the RPG game. (Hu, Kussmaul, & Olivieri, 2018; Dolgopolovas, Jevsikova, & Dagiene, 2018) pointed out that students might instinctively resist utilizing learning products which didn’t fit their aesthetic. This means that it is necessary to continuously improve the style of characters and scenarios that appear in this RPG game to attract more California undergraduate freshmen to play.
Secondly, the gameplay design may not be suitable for the mastery of every piece of knowledge and concept. Hosseini et al. (2020) claimed that different types of programming skills require specific methods to learn. This indicates that a long-term process is required to figure out the most appropriate gameplay designs for each piece of knowledge and concept in order to improve California undergraduate freshmen’s learning outcomes and efficiency. Thirdly, there might be unknown bugs in the game as California undergraduate freshmen play, so it is important to make corrections in time in order to provide California undergraduate freshmen a qualified learning product to succeed in Python learning.
Last but not least, Python Impact still requires developer to build up appropriate ways for California undergraduate freshmen to learn complex concepts such as function and loops. Hopkins (2015) claimed that professional developers should integrate literature into gamification context smoothly instead of directly combining chocolate and broccoli together. This means that simply adding knowledge and concepts into a game can only present amotivation, so students’ interests won’t be triggered and it will be impossible for them to transfer external motivation to internal motivation. Although Prologue section is done well to test how much California undergraduate freshmen have learned from Week 0’s lectures, it will be a long-term and complex process for the developer to learn knowledge of pedagogy and technology in order to improve game’s quality and really help students learn Python.
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