Utilizando gamificação em um sistema de juiz online para engajar alunos de graduação em disciplinas iniciais de programação

Abstract

Due to the problems to learn computer programming and hence the high repetition rates in subjects of programming, especially for beginners, it is necessary methodologies, techniques or tools that support and motivate students. Gamification is recent topic that has been much discussed and is gaining emphasis in both the academic and industry areas, with its usage of elements of design of games in non-game contexts. Thus, in this dissertation, we present an online judge system with gamification techniques in order to motivate and engage beginner students in programming learning. In this context, a quasi-experiment was made with 460 students in eleven classes of programming at the Federal University of Amazonas (UFAM) in order to measure the influence of gamification systems in the performance of student’s grade. At the end of the experiment, a qualitative questionnaire was applied to measure students' feelings in relation to the system divided into three subcomponents: motivation, user experience and learning. The results, in general, were very positive in all subcomponents. Quantitative tests were made to measure the student's learning level and to measure increased skills. These tests present that the system had a positive contribution to the increase in student performance.