CodeTracesure—Combining Gaming, CS Concepts, and Pedagogy

This paper presents an overview of the objectives and design of a video game, CodeTracesure, that we have used in a summer camp for elementary school African-American children. The game is designed to help children practice CS concepts as they play and to help teachers learn about their difficulties. It combines engaging elements of good games with pedagogy to provide a platform where students can practice CS concepts learned in class. It covers such concepts as assignment, variables, sequencing, and operators. The game is equipped with a database to facilitate collection of data that can be analyzed for trends and patterns. The current goal is for it to be a supplementary tool that can help the students practice while allowing teachers to collect useful data that can help improve the learning process. An initial study was conducted using this game with about 40 African-American elementary school children. Findings show that the game was useful in motivating the students to practice code tracing and learn CS concepts. The backend end data that was collected on the performance of the students helped to identify potential pitfalls.