Gamification: The Effective way for better learning

Gamification is a blooming technology that transforms stereotypical academics into interesting game-like elements. Through gamification, educators motivate the students to involve themselves in the game design for entertainment and adopt the features of the game design in an educational setting for enhanced learning. This work focuses on an educational digital game for learning sorting algorithms and concepts from data structures. The game is designed based on constructivism learning theory and the MDA framework, aiming to promote active and student-centered learning. The game challenges players to rearrange a sequence of unsorted aliens by using a set of commands, such as comparing, swapping, and moving. The game also records players’ actions and performance through log data, which can be analyzed for learning behavior, and outcomes. It describes the game design and development process, as well as the potential benefits and limitations of using the game in computer science education, and also discusses how the game can facilitate the development of computational thinking skills such as problem formulation, abstraction, algorithmic thinking, and generalization.