Using an Educational Computer Game as a Motivational Tool for Supplemental Instruction Delivery for Novice Programmers in Learning Computer Programming

This study uses an educational computer game as a supplemental instruction delivery method and investigates its effect on students’ motivation toward computer programming, which is measured by Intrinsic Motivation Inventory. Twenty undergraduate students who enrolled in a basic computer programming course for non computer science major students volunteered to participate in this research study and were assigned to use one of two different supplemental instruction delivery methods for a three-week period. One group used an electronic quiz program and the other group used an educational computer game. Both methods used the same quiz bank and all quizzes were selected randomly. More quizzes were added every week after students learned more computer programming knowledge. After the treatment, students’ intrinsic motivation was compared for the effect of using different delivery methods. Although the results did not show a significant difference statistically, the participants in the computer game group demonstrated higher intrinsic motivation, and the mean difference scores were approaching statistical significance as compared to subjects in the control group. We suggest that the study should be administrated using more participants and the game should be polished to make it more appealing to undergraduate students.