Chat-interviews as a means to explore students’ attitudes and perceptions on developing video games with unity in computer science classes

Abstract

In this paper we explore how students perceived developing video games with Unity. The hypothesis behind the endeavour is that the prospect of being able to develop one’s own video game in a computer science class would make it easier for students to overcome the steep learning curve typically in place when learning to program. As a means of research, we employed chat-interviews for answering the overall research question “How do students perceive a learning sequence aimed at the development of computational thinking and coding competencies through video-game development?”. More specifically, we wanted to know whether students found the task of game-development motivating or not, which aspect or project-phase of game-development they found most motivating, most entertaining, most appealing, least appealing, most difficult, etc. Furthermore, we were interested in what students found most helpful while working with Unity, what they had learned, and which mode of learning – listening to lectures or independent work – appealed to them most. The analysis of the results of the first cycle of chat-interviews has shown that the main motivational factors were the focus on game-design and the option of cooperative work in small teams. The programming act itself using Visual Studio and C# was seen as the most difficult activity. The results of our research indicate that learners are highly motivated by the outlook of developing an interactive video game as opposed to other programming applications. Chat-interviews improved the research process by eliminating one of the most time-consuming steps – the transcription of interview data – and allowing some learners to more openly express their opinions.