The project aims at providing necessary software and educational content for an effective application of gamification in programming education primarily in higher education institutions by extending the key elements of the framework developed in the prior FGPE project. The project will deliver four intellectual outputs: 1. LTI Integration (software): enabling the use of gamified programming exercises within courses provided via popular LMS environments (such as Moodle and Open edX); 2. Mobile gamified PLE (software): vastly improving the experience of the programming learning environment for mobile device users; 3. Tutorial on gamification of programming exercises (guidance material): interactively guiding programming instructors on how to design and implement gamified programming courses; 4. Extended gamified exercise base (Open Educational Resource): extending the set of open-source gamified programming resources with new courses featuring 520 programming exercises. All the project outputs will be freely available in the Internet under open source licenses. The project consortium involves partners with extensive and versatile experience in the domain of programming education and applied gamification. The expected impact is an improvement in efficiency of programming education and its student-perceived experience.
This project builds on the results of the prior FGPE project. The primary objective of this project is to increase the educational potential of the FGPE framework, particularly in the times of the COVID-19 pandemic, by enabling its use within popular LMS platforms, improving the experience of its mobile users, providing better support for instructors trying to apply gamification to their own programming courses and extending the base of ready-to-use gamification exercises. The secondary objective of the project is to raise the awareness of the FGPE framework and its features.
We applied for this project because of the continuing deficiency of skilled workers in the Information Technology (IT) sector, in particular the programmers, and the increased need for e-learning tools after the outburst of COVID-19. This project continues the previous Framework for Gamified Programming Education (FGPE) project, in which we have developed a technological base enabling the gamification of programming education, making it more approachable to the students. For the programming instructors, the project addresses the need for embedding interactive gamified exercises in LMS-based courses (e.g. in Moodle), the need for being tutored in the effort on gamifying exercises and setting up gamified courses, and the need for more available ready-to-use gamified exercises that could be applied to ongoing programming courses as they are; for the students, the project addresses the need for convenient learning at any place at any time with mobile devices, the need for more convenient use of FGPE PLE when going through LMS-based courses, and the need for more available ready-to-use gamified courses that could be used for self-learning.