Game-Q: Gamification to Inform Code Quality in an Assessment Submission System

Although code quality is important in industry, it is often overlooked in academia. Several tools have been developed to help students learn the material. However, most of them are not focused on student engagement. We present Game-Q, a gamification tool that integrates code quality assessment into an assessment submission system. After each submission, students will be informed about code quality issues identified in their own work. They can get more game points by submitting high-quality codes or collecting badges (either self-progress or competition). The top ten students with the highest game points will be shown on the leaderboard. Game-Q was evaluated over one year (2023), involving 228 undergraduate students enrolled in Informatics Engineering and Information Systems. They were enrolled in seven programming courses. According to our observations via post-course surveys, we found that Game-Q appears to have a positive effect on students’ motivation and their awareness of our standards for code quality.