Towards a 3D Virtual Game for Learning Object-Oriented Programming

Fundamentals and C++ Language

Theoretical Considerations and Empirical Results

Fahima Djelil

, Benjamin Albouy-Kissi

, Ad

ela

ıde Albouy-Kissi

, Eric Sanchez

and Jean-Marc

Lavest

Laboratoire Institut Pascal CNRS-UMR 6602, Universit

e Blaise Pascal, Clermont-Ferrand, France

EducTice, Institut Franc¸ais de l’Education, Ecole Normale Sup

erieure, Lyon, France

Keywords:

Object-Oriented Programming, Game Based Learning.

Abstract:

Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) paradigm is one of the most common paradigm in introductory pro-

gramming courses. However, novices often have difﬁculties to understand the basic concepts which are of a

high level of abstraction. Either tangible and virtual constructive games provide the students with a more fa-

miliar way for learning programming. This paper applies a construction game metaphor approach for learning

OOP concepts and C++ syntax. After introducing some tangible and virtual constructive games for learning

programming, we present an experimental prototype of a new 3D virtual game for learning OOP called PrOgO

as well as the results of an experiment conducted with beginner student using PrOgO.

1 INTRODUCTION

Learning programming can be perceived difﬁcult

from novices (Yan, 2009; Overmars, 2004). A novice

student has to face a primary challenge which is

problem solving, he has to understand how a com-

puter program runs and has to learn a speciﬁc syn-

tax in which his program will be transcribed. Ab-

stract concepts understanding is another challenge.

The basic Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) con-

cepts which are on a higher level of abstraction have

become the most common programming concepts for

introductory programming courses, and the transition

to the OOP paradigm has proven to be more difﬁcult

than expected (B

orstler et al., 2008). Therefore, a

lot of systems have been designed to support the ac-

quisition and development of programming concepts.

They aim to take abstract programming concepts to

the real world for learners. They are based either

on tangible interfaces or on virtual simulations and

games that connect with the learners interest. This

has proven to be very engaging and empowering for

novices (Cooper et al., 2000; K

olling, 2010).

In this work, we apply a construction game

metaphor approach for learning OOP. Our ultimate

goal is to provide novice students with realistic and

relevant representations that will help them in learn-

ing OOP concepts and C++ programming syntax in an

entertaining way. For this purpose, we present an ex-

perimental prototype of a new three-dimensional (3D)

virtual game for basic OOP concepts such as class,

object, object creation, method invocation, parame-

ter passing and object destruction. First we present

a literature review on tangible interfaces and virtual

environments for learning programming (section 2),

then we describe our ﬁrst prototype of the game we

called PrOgO (section 3) and ﬁnally, we describe an

experiment we conducted with beginner students us-

ing this prototype, we will proceed to interpret the re-

sults (section 4) and to extract the corresponding con-

clusions (section 5).

2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

There have been several tangible interfaces for learn-

ing programming which aim to bring the abstract con-

cepts of programming closer to the real world, to be

more easily graspable (Jetsu, 2008). These interfaces

consist of tangible components i.e. physical and me-

chanical that the user can assemble to construct pro-

gram’s sequences. One of the ﬁrst tangible program-

ming interfaces was Radia Perlman’s Slot Machine

(Perlman, 1976) which was based on the LOGO pro-

289

Djelil F., Albouy-Kissi B., Albouy-Kissi A., Sanchez E. and Lavest J..

Towards a 3D Virtual Game for Learning Object-Oriented Programming Fundamentals and C++ Language - Theoretical Considerations and Empirical

Results.

DOI: 10.5220/0005475802890294

In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2015), pages 289-294

ISBN: 978-989-758-108-3

 2015 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

gramming language. LOGO was one of the most

widely used programming languages for beginners

(Jetsu, 2008), allowing students to use the computer

to control a robotic turtle to follow their instructions

(Papert, 1980). Slot Machine allowed students to con-

trol either a real mechanical robot or a screen based

simulation of such a robot (Perlman, 1976). Algo-

Block is another interface that is somewhat similar to

Slot Machine. It consists of a set of physical blocks

that connect to one another to form a program (Suzuki

and Kato, 1993). Each block corresponds to a single

command in the LOGO programming language. The

term tangible programming language was invented by

Suziki and Kato in order to describe the AlgoBlock

collaborative programming environment (Suzuki and

Kato, 1993). Topobo is another example of this kind

of interfaces that was designed to learn programming

thinking (Rafﬂe, 2004), it consists of a set of active

and passive blocks which can be combined together to

assemble and animate robotic structures. The active

blocks are embedded with a kinetic memory which

allows recording and playback of physical motion of

the constructed assembly. This constructed assembly

is animated by moving passive blocks that are con-

nected to the active ones. After the animation has

been created, it can be played back by pressing a but-

ton (Rafﬂe, 2004).

Several environments have been designed with a

view to reduce the complexity of programming learn-

ing for novice students and increase their motivation.

These environments use graphic representations to in-

troduce abstract programming concepts and allow stu-

dents to create games and animations by manipulating

programs. Alice (Conway et al., 2000) and Green-

foot (K

olling, 2010) are examples of such environ-

ments, which strive to engage students by allowing

them to write programs about games, stories and sim-

ulations. One of the important characteristics of Al-

ice and Greenfoot is a design that explicitly visual-

izes fundamental concepts of OOP in a realistic and

a meaningful context. Students do not typically start

by manipulating source code, they rather start by cre-

ating objects by selecting graphics which represent

classes. Once an object has been created, it can be

placed into a 2D (Greenfoot) or a 3D (Alice) scene,

when the object is selected the user can see all its

methods which constitute all its available actions it

can perform. Once a method has been selected, the

user can see immediately the effect of its execution

onscreen. After the students are introduced to the fun-

damentals of OOP, scenarios that have been already

implemented are presented to them enabling easy ma-

nipulation of programs in their syntax. This charac-

teristic is very interesting for novice students, since it

has been proved (Cooper et al., 2003; K

olling, 2010)

that this helps novices to avoid syntax errors while fo-

cusing on understanding abstract concepts before ma-

nipulating source code. According to (Utting et al.,

2010), these environments’ principal harks back to

Logo’s turtle. Since they reify objects so that the re-

sult of command execution is visible as the position,

size, rotation, and other visible state and behavior of

the object changes. These environments provide high-

level commands like move and hide low-level details

such as graphics primitives.

By analogy with any construction game such as

Topobo, a screen based simulation of such a game that

allows students to manipulate 3D graphics to create

and animate robotic structures, whereas each graph-

ical elementary block represents an object, would be

relevant to introduce OOP concepts. Indeed, an object

is an active entity within a program, including a set of

attributes (knowledge) and methods (skills) that act

on its attributes to achieve some functionalities which

are the objectives of the program.

3 A 3D VIRTUAL GAME

PROTOTYPE FOR LEARNING

OOP FUNDAMENTALS AND

C++ PROGRAMMING

LANGUAGE

A constructive game dedicated to learning OOP fun-

damentals, should enable students creating objects,

visualizing their state and behavior, interacting with

them by executing their methods and make them com-

municate with one another. Direct manipulation of

graphics representing object-oriented concepts can

help students, as in real life, to think in terms of ob-

jects. The student should be able to create as many

class instances as he likes. The concept of inheritance

can be materialized by creating new objects based on

other objects having the same behavior with new at-

tributes or the same attributes with new behaviors.

The concept of composition can be represented by

objects that contain other objects. In order to enable

the student to understand more easily the implementa-

tion of the abstract concepts in a speciﬁc syntax such

as C++, all his manipulations executed directly on

the graphics should be interpreted into source code.

Since the representations are very precise, each stu-

dent’s action can be interpreted into a C++ instruc-

tion. This will constitute a complete program, that

the student can visualize and modify in order to prac-

tice programming, after the abstract concepts are well

understood.

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290

Figure 1: PrOgO main window showing a realization example.

This design principle provides students with a pri-

mary introductory step to OOP concepts, through fun

and realistic 3D graphics, before manipulating source

code. This also allows students to express their own

creativity, and provides them with an engaging learn-

ing tool.

PrOgO (Object-Oriented PrOgramming) is an ex-

perimental prototype which has been developed as a

proof of concept of such a game. This prototype gen-

erates C++ source code corresponding to direct ma-

nipulations of 3D graphics. Figure 1 shows the inter-

face of PrOgO with an example of a student’s realiza-

tion. The interface comprises 3D elementary blocks

representing classes that the student can instantiate to

obtain objects, a 3D scene to place in the objects that

have been created, and a separate tab anchored on the

right side of the 3D scene to display the C++ code that

is being generated during the direct manipulations of

the 3D graphics. Once an object is created and placed

into the 3D scene, the student can view all its meth-

ods, and invoke them. Once a method is executed, its

result on the state of the object is immediately visu-

alized, and the corresponding C++ code is automat-

ically generated. Each object has three elements of

state that are automatically visualized on screen: a po-

sition which is speciﬁed in x, y, z coordinates, a rota-

tion and a color. Separate objects can connect to one

another and assembled objects can be disassembled.

Each of these can be manipulated trough method calls

to create a robotic or a mechanic structure. Note that

the code generated is not yet editable.

4 EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

In the Institute of Technology of le Puy-en-Velay

(University of Auvergne, France), the course Fun-

damentals of Computer Science is imparted in the

ﬁrst year of the Degree in Digital Imaging. This

course consists of two main topics: Introduction to al-

gorithms and programming, and OOP fundamentals.

The ﬁrst topic covers the basics about programming

on C++: data types, variables and operators, con-

trol ﬂow statements, arrays and pointers, procedures

and functions, dynamic allocation. The students, at

this stage, are initiated to C++ procedural program-

ming and don’t have knowledge about OOP. The sec-

ond topic is an introduction to OOP in C++: classes

and objects, encapsulation, composition, inheritance,

polymorphism, etc.

We have experimented PrOgO with the ﬁrst year

students in Digital Imaging Degree. This experimen-

tation aims to identify potential design, ergonomic

and pedagogical issues of the game, and intends to

provide a conceptual basis for a future evolutive pro-

totype on the basis of the students’ expectations in

terms of learning and entertaining aspects.

Towardsa3DVirtualGameforLearningObject-OrientedProgrammingFundamentalsandC++Language-Theoretical

ConsiderationsandEmpiricalResults

291

This was conducted after the students have com-

pleted the ﬁrst topic of the course, and once they

started the second one. They have been introduced

for the ﬁrst time to some elementary concepts such

as class, object, encapsulation and method invoca-

tion. The participants were a total of 48. Their aver-

age age was 18.7 years and all except one reported to

play to video games very frequently (31 participants

play every day and 16 of them play several times a

week). They also mostly reported not to play to seri-

ous games (37 participants don’t play against 11 who

play regularly). We collected pictures of the graphical

realizations (Figure 2) as well as the corresponding

generated source code ﬁles, to determine whether the

students were getting involved into the game. We also

recorded all the students’ actions within logs includ-

ing objects creation and destruction and method calls

within the 3D scene, as well as code selection within

the tabs containing the code which is automatically

generated and the code which is already implemented

that includes the declaration of the available classes.

This have been made in order to know whether the

students make the effort to engage in understanding

the relationship between the 3D graphics and the gen-

erated code, rather than only manipulating the graph-

ics in the 3D scene. We also used an attitude sur-

vey which is focused on participant’s experience and

opinions about using PrOgO in the future for learning

other OOP concepts. They were asked to rate the ped-

agogical and entertaining aspects of the game, to indi-

cate whether they have improved their understanding

of the concepts of class, object, method invocation

and C++ syntax related to these concepts, and what

aspects of the game they would like to be improved.

From the collected graphical realizations (Figure

2), we can observe that some students clearly suc-

ceeded to construct complex and meaningful struc-

tures. This indicates that the students were quiet

engaged in the game and motivated to accomplish

the game’s objective. From the generated interaction

logs, we observed that the students were mostly fo-

cused on manipulating graphics in the 3D scene. The

logs have shown that the actions that have been mostly

performed are objects instantiating and objects meth-

ods calls such as assemble(), translate() and rotate().

Some students were also interested to analyse the gen-

erated code, since the logs included actions such as

”select code” and ”select tab”.

From the attitude survey, we collected the stu-

dents’ opinions expressed upon four levels (not at all,

sparsely, quite, a lot) about the amusing and peda-

gogical aspects of PrOgO, as well as improvement of

their understanding of the presented concepts. Table

1 summarizes the obtained results. We have linked

Figure 2: Some students’ realizations.

the amusing judgement to the student’s frequency of

play to video games and the pedagogical judgement

to the student’s frequency of play to serious games

and we compared the obtained results. We concluded

that the students have mostly found PrOgO sparsely

or quite amusing and quite pedagogical, regardless

of the fact that they play every day or several times

a week to video games, and the fact that they play

or not to serious games, since the obtained results

are not very different from the separate students cate-

gories, as it is reported in table 1: 51% of the students

who play to video games everyday and 39% of those

who play several times a week stated that they have

found PrOgO ”sparsely” amusing. 39% of the stu-

dents who play everyday and 44% of those who play

several times a week found it ”quite” amusing. They

are totally 47% to ﬁnd it ”sparsely” amusing and 41%

to ﬁnd it ”quite” amusing. Moreover, no one of the

students who play to serious games has found it ”not

at all” pedagogical, 58% rather found it ”quite” ped-

agogical and 34% found it ”sparsely” pedagogical,

those who don’t play to serious games have mostly

found it ”quite” pedagogical (67% against 22% who

found it ”sparsely” pedagogical).

We have also concluded that the students have

mostly sparsely or quite improved their understand-

ing of the presented concepts (class, object and re-

lated C++ syntax), regardless of the fact that they

previously understood these concepts in classroom

or not. As it is shown in table 1, the students who

said that they have already understood these concepts

in classroom have though improved their understand-

ing ( 44% stated that they have ”sparsely” improved

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Table 1: Participants’ opinions about PrOgO collected in the attitude survey.

comparison item participants not at all sparsely quite a lot

how is PrOgO amusing?

students who play to video games

everyday

10% 51% 39% 0%

students who play to video games

several times a week

17% 39% 44% 0%

all 12% 47% 41% 0%

how is PrOgO pedagogical?

students who play to serious games 0% 34% 58% 8%

students who don’t play to serious

games

3% 22% 67% 8%

all 2% 25% 65% 8%

how did you improve your

understanding of the

concept of class?

students who think they have al-

ready understood in classroom

16% 44% 36% 4%

students who think they have not

understood in classroom

8% 59% 33% 0%

all 12 % 51% 35% 2%

how did you improve your

understanding of the

concept of object?

students who think they have al-

ready understood in classroom

26% 37% 26% 11%

students who think they have not

understood in classroom

3% 54% 43% 0%

all 12 % 47% 37% 4%

how did you improve your

understanding of the syntax

related to the concepts of

class and object?

students who think they have al-

ready understood in classroom

39% 33% 28% 0%

students who think they have not

understood in classroom

3% 62% 32% 3%

all 16 % 51% 31% 2%

their understanding of the concept of class, 37% have

stated the same regarding to the concept of object, and

33% regarding to the syntax of these concepts). There

are also a number of them who stated ”quite” improv-

ing their understanding ( 36% regarding to the con-

cept of class, 26% regarding to the concept of object,

and 28% regarding to the syntax of these concepts).

Most of the students who thought not to understand

before in classroom have also presented quite similar

percentages (59% stated improving ”sparsely” their

understanding of the concept of class, the percentages

for the concepts of object and syntax are respectively

54% and 62%). A lot of them have reported having

”quite” improved their understanding of these con-

cepts, the percentages are respectively (33% , 43%

and 32%).

We gathered some students’ statements regarding

to what they learned, during the experiment such as:

”I have learned how to declare an object and how to

make method calls”, ”I understand more about the

C++ syntax, and this tool can help me to review some

concepts at home for example”, ”I understand better

the syntax related to object instantiation and method

calls, especially about pointers”, ”I understand better

the relationship between the class and the object”.

We have also collected the students opinions about

using PrOgO in the future for learning additional con-

cepts, and linked the results to their judgements re-

garding to weather they found it amusing, pedagogi-

cal and attractive. We concluded that the students who

want to use PrOgO again are mostly those who found

it quite amusing, quite pedagogical and quite attrac-

tive, and those who don’t want to use it again are those

who found it sparsely amusing, sparsely pedagogical

and sparsely attractive (Figure 3).

Furthermore, we asked the students what aspects

of the game they would like to be improved. The an-

swers were mostly about ergonomic and learning as-

pects. Most of the students indicated that they would

like more graphical elements, and more options such

as having the possibility to construct other objects

from the available ones, in order to be able to manipu-

late groups of objects. Most of the students expressed

an interest in modifying the generated code, to inter-

act more easily with the virtual environment and to

have more freedom in their actions.

5 CONCLUSIONS

In this work, we have applied a construction game

metaphor for learning OOP and C++ programming

Towardsa3DVirtualGameforLearningObject-OrientedProgrammingFundamentalsandC++Language-Theoretical

ConsiderationsandEmpiricalResults

293

(a)

(b)

Figure 3: Using PrOgO in the future according to weather

the students found it amusing, pedagogical and attractive:

a) students who want to use PrOgO again. b) students who

don’t want to use PrOgO any more.

language. We have presented a ﬁrst experimental pro-

totype of a 3D virtual game called PrOgO by which

abstract OOP concepts are represented in a meaning-

ful and a visible way, and we experimented it with the

ﬁrst year students in Digital Imaging Degree.

From the analysis of results presented in the pre-

vious section, we concluded that although PrOgO is

at the prototype stage, the students have mostly found

it quite pedagogical and amusing. They also mostly

sparsely improved their understanding of the concepts

of class, object, object instantiation, method calls and

C++ syntax related to these concepts. Moreover, more

than half of them stated that they want to use PrOgO

in the future for learning additional concepts, and

most of them have expressed the wish to have more

options regarding to the interaction interface and the

content of the game, such as having the possibility to

modify the generated code, which is something we

have already planned to do before. Although this

work is a preliminary study, such results are signiﬁ-

cant. In this sense, a stable release of the game could

have a positive inﬂuence on the learning of OOP ba-

sics as well as C++ programming language.

Actually, we work on the design and the devel-

opment of an evolutive prototype dedicated to tactile

interfaces such as tangible tabletops and tablets. This

work allowed us to validate our design principal, es-

pecially the construction metaphor on which the game

is based on, and the students feedback allowed us to

conﬁrm the extensions we have already planned for

a future evolutive prototype. A future work will also

include the study of the impact of PrOgO on the stu-

dents motivation and learning.

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