Abstract

The effective teaching of the concept of programming, where critical thinking is an important factor, is not so easy in secondary education. New teaching approaches, including, game-based learning, may provide a solution due to their inclusion of more fun and diverse activities but they still lack the active participation of the students in the creation of the material. In this context, we develop new teaching and learning materials to teach programming principles, like conditionals, loops and variables, to secondary education students based mainly on the constructivistic philosophy. The aim is to help students learn the basics of programming though creating games using a block-type programming environment and not only through the use and the playing of games. This approach combines the use of game design and creation with learning and results to the developing of basic programming skills. In order to evaluate the produced material quantitative and qualitative methods, such as questionnaires, classroom observations and discussions have been used. The results depict an improvement of the students’ knowledge and skills in programming through this game creation process.