HBot—An Instructional Video Game with Concept-Integrated Game Mechanics

Video games can engage beginners in learning. This research is predicated on the thesis that games—where concepts are integrated with game mechanics—facilitate more effective learning. HBot is a video game with concept-integrated game mechanics for engaging and teaching key programming concepts. To assess its learning benefits, experiments have been conducted at two middle schools in districts with targeted underrepresented populations in computing. Quantitative results indicate that HBot helped improve student performance across nine out of eleven concept subtopics in programming, as compared to the control instruments at the first school. As students gained a mastery of the game mechanics related to these topics, their performance generally improved even as the concepts became more difficult. At the second school, where students had prior programming exposure, the impact was less noticeable and improvement was seen for five out of eleven subtopics. At both schools, analysis of qualitative think-aloud data gathered during the experiments support quantitative findings.