Need-Based Game Design: Developing a CT Game Based on Educational Needs

This study investigates how need-based game design can support the teaching of computational thinking in higher education, responding to persistent problems in introductory programming courses, including low enrolment, high dropout, and poor pass rates. Its central question asks which design concepts matter most for a need-based educational game on computational thinking, with findings to be considered alongside affordances, emotional design, and sustainable design theories. The research is grounded in a Swedish university context.

The authors conducted structured e-mail interviews with 15 programming teachers, drawn from 18 invited, and analysed the responses using open and axial coding. Teachers consistently reported that students struggle when moving from basic concepts to methods, classes, and object-oriented programming, a transition that demands holistic reasoning about data and logic alongside substantial memorisation of code. Because imperative programming figured more prominently in the responses and aligned more closely with foundational courses, the analysis concentrates on it, yielding thirteen categories grouped into a new mindset, basics, and design.

From these findings the authors derive three design concepts for a computational thinking game: actions, which specify what players must be able to do in order to learn; engagement, framed through emotional design across visceral, behavioural, and reflective levels; and sustainability. These concepts constitute the paper's principal contribution. The authors acknowledge that the small, single-country sample limits generalisability and recommend quantitative research to validate and extend the framework.