Design and Evaluation of Serious Games for Higher Orders of Learning on the Topic of Programming

This thesis aims to give a better look at the research and development of educational Serious Games (SGs) with the specific goal of facilitating higher-order learning as described in Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy. Programming is one of the potential subjects that could be taught with the use of such a SG and is the main example used to explore the topic in applied detail. A foundation is established for a solid discussion of the matter and a new classification metric based on the containment of learning materials and application of acquired skills is proposed. We use this new metric in conjunction with established methods to analyze a subset of existing literature to validate its usefulness and extract valuable insights and potential avenues for success from the related work. Existing game mechanics are examined on their suitability for use in educational SGs and specifically related to their position in Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy and the resulting order of learning. This process revealed multiple promising mechanics and design paradigms and some entirely new variations. We successfully applied these in the creation of a design for an innovative programming SG that is optimized for high-order learning. The first steps towards an implementation are taken via early technical work on a prototype in the Godot engine, where different technologies were compared. Finally we discuss some possible modern evaluation and analysis techniques that could be included and outline future efforts to be taken.