Gamificação no Ensino de Fundamentos de Programação: proposta de uma Plataforma E-Learning gamificada

Abstract

The growth of the job market in the field of programming has attracted an increasing number of students, resulting in a higher demand for courses related to information technology. However, this scenario also presents challenges, such as learning difficulties, high dropout rates, and deficiencies in teaching quality. Similarly, with the expansion of e-learning tools, there is a growing need to seek mechanisms that enhance students’ interest and engagement. Among these mechanisms, gamification has gained prominence and is becoming established in various areas of education. Thus, the purpose of this work is to understand, from the perspective of the academic community at the Federal University of Ceará, Quixadá campus, the main difficulties and challenges faced by students in learning Programming Fundamentals, as well as to investigate how gamification can be implemented, together with an e-learning tool, to mitigate such issues. For this, a high-fidelity prototype of a web-based e-learning system, named "Koding", was developed. This development followed the principles of digital product design thinking, combined with the 6Ds methodology for gamification. During the Immersion phase, data were collected through the assessment of the state of the art and through research with students and professors of the campus. In the Analysis and Synthesis phase, various artifacts were produced to document and structure the data collected. In the Ideation phase, efforts were made to understand students’ perspectives and reasoning regarding the difficulties in learning programming, structuring a plan to gamify this process in an e-learning system. In the Prototyping phase, the prototype was then developed. Finally, in the Testing phase, evaluations were conducted with students enrolled in the Programming Fundamentals course to investigate aspects of usability, motivational impact, and playability of the prototype. The results indicated positive perspectives from the participants, especially regarding usability, but also with good indicators in terms of motivation and playability.