Prog-Poly: A Board Game for Project-Based Learning in Programming and Software Engineering

<italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Contribution:</i> This work aims to develop a board game called Prog-poly, based on the classic Monopoly board game to try to mitigate the facts reported by the students, and consequently assist in the teaching of programming language. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Background:</i> The learning of programming languages is considered difficult by students of higher education in computing areas. The main reasons for this fact, according to students, are abstraction, logical reasoning, rigor in the use of programming languages. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Intended outcomes:</i> Increase the motivation level of students introducing programming languages learning through gamification aspects, thus aiding students to perform better in class. Initial evidence shows that the board game can help in the teaching activity, besides motivating the classes. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Application design:</i> To test Prog-poly board game, a miniexperiment was conducted with groups of students to compare Prog-poly efficiency with traditional teaching methods in the learning of algorithms, student motivation and fun factor. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Findings:</i> The authors obtained the following data: 95% of students answered Prog-poly motivates learning algorithms, 85% that the game offers learning algorithms, 80% considered the game to be a less tiring way of learning. Although initial results are presented, future works aim to compare their efficiency in teaching algorithms with the traditional way.