DebugamO：遊戲式偵錯學習系統及其對程式學習動機影響之研究

Abstract

近年來各國掀起一股程式學習的浪潮，在此浪潮下的學習者有逐漸低齡化的趨勢，面對這些年輕的學習者，如何建立一個友善且吸引人的程式學習環境，成為一個教育領域的挑戰。文獻中指出，偵錯是新手在學習程式時碰到的一大問題，教育系統缺乏一套有系統性的偵錯教學，導致學生在最初撰寫自己的程式碼時，碰到許多困難與挫折，間接導致學生放棄繼續學習程式。 另一方面，電腦遊戲對於新一代熟悉智慧型手機和網路的學生而言，扮演很重要的角色。因此越來越多的研究藉由探討遊戲所帶來的好處與壞處，近一步將遊戲元素和設計遊戲的方法應用在教學領域上。這類的手法稱作遊戲式學習（Game-based learning）。遊戲式學習的概念在教育界和學界上的應用越來越受到重視。 結合偵錯教學與遊戲式學習，我們展示了一個線上偵錯學習遊戲『DebugamO』的設計與開發，希望藉由這套遊戲系統，來提升學生對於偵錯和程式的學習動機，以及加強學生的偵錯及程式表現。遊戲中分為六個章節，分別代表一個基本程式概念；每個章節中的關卡實際上是一個偵錯題目，透過友善的介面設計、積木式程式語言的運用、趣味的故事主線與機器人生動對話內容，吸引學生投入並解開偵錯題目，提升偵錯與程式能力。 而為了驗證DebugamO是否如預期對學生偵錯及程式方面的學習有所助益，我們設計了一個實驗流程，將參與者分為遊戲組與課堂授課組，收集兩者的前測、後測問卷回答與遊戲內自動記錄的玩家行為數據，加上統計方法的運用，來回答我們所設定的數個研究問題。最後結果顯示，相比傳統授課，透過遊戲進行學習的學生展現了更高的學習興趣及自我效能感，也有了更好的偵錯表現（找出錯誤的速度更快、正確率更高）。在程式能力測驗表現方面，不管遊戲或傳統授課均有大幅提升。此外，前測顯示女性玩家對於程式有較低的學習興趣，質性訪談顯示可能源於程式等同數學的誤解，但在進行遊戲之後，男女之間學習動機的差距縮小。 本研究的貢獻除了前述的實驗分析，也將開源DebugamO遊戲系統的程式碼，供其他教育團隊或相關領域學者的研究使用，期許能對學生學習偵錯的行為與歷程有更深入的了解。

Learning programming is trending worldwide recently. In this trend, learners are getting younger and younger. However, facing these young leaners, it becomes a difficult problem among education field to create a friendly and engaging environment to support their learning. According to literature, debugging is a top problem while novices learn to program. There is a lack of systematic pedagogy to teach novices how to debug, so they have to trial and error while they are debugging their code, and it causes them many frustration, which leads them to give up learning programming. On the other hand, computer game is playing an important role to the new generation who are familiar to smart phones and internet. Therefore, more and more studies focus on discussing the advantages and disadvantages of game on learning, and furthermore apply these games elements and design principles onto educational purpose. These approaches are called “Game-based learning”, and it is getting more and more attention from education world and the academic circle. Combined findings in literature of debugging learning and game-based learning, we demonstrate the design and implement of an online debugging learning game called “DebugamO”. Through this learning system, we hope to raise the learning motivation of those novice students, and increase their performance on programming and debugging. There are six chapters in DebugamO, each represents an elementary programming concept; and each level in the chapter is actually a debugging problem, which contains a bug among default buggy codes. Via friendly game interface design, aid of block-based programming language, interesting story-telling and vivid robot conversation, we aim to engage novice students into solving these debugging problems and eventually gain their programming and debugging ability. To verify if DebugamO meets our expectation on learning, we designed an experiment procedural, which separates participants into two groups: game group and traditional lecture group. Then we collects pre-test and post-test survey result and in-game auto-recorded behavioral data from both group, and use two statistical methods to analyze if the result can answer the study questions we set before experiment. The final result shows that, those who used DebugamO for learning, not only have higher learning interest and self-efficacy, but also have better debugging performance(faster to locate a bug and higher correct rate). Among programming ability test, both group have similar gain. In addition, pre-test indicates that female players are less interested to learning program, qualitative interview suggests that it might origin in the misconception that “programming ability is equal to mathematic ability”. But after the learning activity on DebugamO, both gender shows significant gains of learning interest on programming and debugging, while females have larger gain so it shortens the gap between male and female. The contribution of this study not only includes above experiment setting and analysis, we also open source entire DebugamO code online, so other education technology groups or academic scholars can use it as a research tool. Hope it can let us understand more about the process of how students learn to debug.