Context: Programming courses are compulsory for most engineering degrees, but students’ performance on these courses is often not as good as expected. Programming is difficult for students to learn, given that it includes a lot of new, complex, and abstract topics. All of this has led experts to the conclusion that new teaching techniques are required if students are to be motivated and engaged in learning on programming courses. Gamification has come to be an effective technique in education in general, and is especially useful in programming courses. This motivated us to develop an open source gamified platform, called UDPiler, for use in a programming course. Objective: The main goal of this article is to obtain empirical evidence on the improvement of students’ learning performance when using UDPiler in comparison to a non-gamified compiler. Method: A quasi-experiment was performed with two groups of first-year engineering students at Diego Portales University in Chile, using a non-gamified compiler and a gamified platform, respectively. Results: The results reveal that the students obtained better marks when the gamified platform was used to learn C programming. In addition, there is statistical significance in favor of there being a positive effect on the learning performance of those students who used the gamified platform. Conclusions: The results allow us to conclude that gamification is an encouraging approach with which to teach C programming, a finding that is aligned with previous empirical studies concerning gamification on programming courses, carried out in academic contexts. Nonetheless, we are aware that further validation is also required to corroborate and strengthen the findings obtained and to investigate whether the kind of gamified elements (mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics) used have any influence on students’ performance, among other issues that deserve further investigation and that are explained throughout this article.

B. Marín

J. Frez

J. Cruz-Lemus

M. Genero

ACM Transactions on Computing Education

ACM TRANSACTIONS ON COMPUTING EDUCATION (TOCE)（原名为 JERIC，JOURNAL ON EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES IN COMPUTING）涵盖了计算机教育的各个方面：传统计算机科学、计算机工程、信息技术和信息学；计算的新兴方面；以及计算在其他学科中的应用。这些论文的共同特点是学术性的教学方法、对教育从业者的广泛吸引力以及与学生学习的明确联系。

ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE), formerly known as JERIC, JOURNAL ON EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES IN COMPUTING, covers all aspects of computing education, including traditional computer science, computer engineering, information technology, and informatics, as well as emerging areas of computing and its applications in other disciplines. The common features of these papers are their academic teaching methods, broad appeal to educators, and clear connections to student learning.

《ACM Transactions on Computing Education》（原名 JERIC，JOURNAL ON EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES IN COMPUTING）涵盖计算机教育的各个方面，包括传统的计算机科学、计算机工程、信息技术和信息学，以及计算的新兴领域和计算在其他学科中的应用。这些论文的共同特点是采用学术性的教学方法，广泛吸引教育从业者，并与学生的学习有明确的联系。

An Empirical Investigation on the Benefits of Gamification in Programming Courses

It is concluded that gamification is an encouraging approach with which to teach C programming, a finding that is aligned with previous empirical studies concerning gamification on programming courses, carried out in academic contexts.

Category	Quartile
工程技术	3
工程技术, 学科教育	4

An Empirical Investigation on the Benefits of Gamification in Programming Courses

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Journal Info

Category	Quartile
EDUCATION, SCIENTIFIC DISCIPLINES	1