Capstone courses, where students work on a large group project at the end of their degree, are common in computing. Many accreditation and industry bodies explicitly require or recommend them. Over the past two decades, capstone courses specifically focused on game development have become increasingly popular. Game development offers students the…

It is widely believed that there are educational benefits to making computer games, but there is no systematic review of research on this topic. This article describes a meta-synthesis of research on children designing and programming computer games that investigates the extent to which there is evidence of benefits for computer science learning…

We explore the feasibility of early introduction to automata theory through gamification. We designed a puzzle game that players can answer correctly if they understand the fundamental concepts of automata theory. In our investigation, 90 children played the game, and their actions were recorded in play logs. An analysis of the play logs shows…

Short-term outreach interventions are conducted to raise young students' awareness of the computer science (CS) field. Typically, these interventions are targeted at K--12 students, attempting to encourage them to study CS in higher education. This study is based on a series of extra-curricular outreach events that introduced students to the…

Is there any relationship between students' cognitive style and the ability to learn programming through serious games? The aim of this work is to assess the learning effectiveness and motivational appeal of digital games for learning basic programming concepts, involving secondary education students. For this purpose, the Code.org®'s activity…

There have been growing criticisms in recent years among the computer and video games community on the apparent lack of graduates capable of meeting the industry's employment needs. Following the sharp rise in the number of computer and video games courses across higher education (HE) institutions in the UK and across the globe, this article…