The effectiveness of digital game for introductory programming concepts

The adoption of games to learn introductory programming concepts has been widely used and there were many evidences of the benefits of learning to code in different levels of education even at primary level. Recent studies acknowledged that the use of games to explore coding environment can be motivating, increases female students´ perception in computing programming skill and enhances support for computing. This paper discusses the effectiveness of a Digital Game for learning introductory programming concepts, based on the following constructs: (1) playability; (2) multimedia adequacy; (3) ease of use; (4) enjoyment and (5) immersion. This study was conducted with the objective of evaluating the effectiveness of using Digital Games for understanding programming concepts. Participants are 19 students from a local higher education institution. The analysis of collected data uncovered the extent of students´ perception in programming concepts learning via exploring Digital Games and the effectiveness and efficiency of using games to learn programming. Overall results showed that the Digital Game has highly playability, multimedia adequacy, enjoyment, immersion and ease of use. In total, 78.9 % of students agreed and strongly agreed that they very quickly familiarized themselves with the game and the elements of the game are consistent with the game structure.