Children Learning Object Oriented Programming: A Design Science Study

Abstract

The discipline of teaching children is a topic that has been explored extensively throughout history. There are known theories about pedagogy which repeatedly have been proven to be successful, and have been used in countless cases. One area that remains unexplored, however, is teaching the concepts of object oriented programming to children. The objective of this report is to pinpoint the important characteristics of a game addressing this matter. By the use of a design science approach, the development of an artefact is presented. The artefact bases its design on known theories about children’s learning and elementary notions of object oriented programming. The evaluation of the artefact is done by the means of experiments involving seventeen students, and through analysis of observations, open-ended discussions and a paper quiz. The results indicate that it is possible to teach object oriented programming to younger children. The collected data were categorised in themes that were identified as opinion, learning outcome and inconclusive findings. Additionally, it is concluded that incidental learning and traditional methods of pedagogy are usable in games that teaches programming. The results will be useful both for the development of similar games, and for future research.