Gamification Strategies for an Introductory Algorithms and Programming Course

Abstract

We present a proposal for the application of gamification strategies to an introductory course in algorithms and programming, which is aimed at different university engineering programs. The purpose of the course is that students acquire skills in the development of algorithms and their implementation in a programming language to solve problems in various domains. The activities proposed for the course rely mainly on a platform which allows the presentation and evaluation of these activities. Performance in the field is low, with a rather high failure rate. Our purpose is to propose some gamification strategies in the classroom, based on mechanisms implemented both in the platform and in a mobile application that could serve as support for the course.