Integrating Animation and Game-making in Teaching JavaScript

Web development is a fast-growing field and there is a high demand on job market for web developers. Web programming using JavaScript is one of the most important skills for web developers. However, like other programming languages, students feel JavaScript difficult to learn because it is hard for them to setup a mental model, and because they lack the encouragement, motivation, and the mode of study in learning. To meet these challenges, we integrated animation and game-making into the teaching of JavaScript. In this paper, we report some examples of the developed animation and game-making teaching materials, and hope they will benefit educators in web development area. Unlike the common approach of developing a software or tool to create animations or games for teaching, we teach the basic constructs of programming while making the animations or games. The results of a post-survey of our students show that this teaching approach can help students better understand JavaScript. Students indicated that this approach is exciting yet challenging, and they are motivated to learn more JavaScript in the future.