Abstract—The objective of this study is to use game based
programming to facilitate the teaching of debugging for novice
programmers. The programing errors which novice
programmers frequently committed were involved in the game
programs. Worksheets were designed to guide students how to
apply debugging strategies to find these errors and correct them.
The debugging practices include the programming concepts of
variable assignments, boolean statements, if statements and
loop statements. Forty-one senior high school students
participated in this experiment for six weeks including pre- and
post-achievement test. The data including programming
achievement test, debugging self-efficacy and questionnaire
results were collected and examined. Though students’
debugging self-efficacy wasn’t significantly enhanced after the
experiment, the paired-samples T test results show that this
model of debugging practices was effective in improving
students' programming concepts. Furthermore, students
showed positive attitudes to this learning model and
programming learning in the future.
Index Terms—Computer science education, debugging
practice, game-based programming, scratch.
The authors are with the Graduate Institute of Curriculum Instruction and
Technology, National Chi-Nan University, Taiwan (e-mail:
cfchiu@ncnu.edu.tw, s101435509@ncnu.edu.tw).
Cite: Chiung-Fang Chiu and Hsing-Yi Huang, "Guided Debugging Practices of Game Based Programming for Novice Programmers," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 5, no. 5, pp. 343-347, 2015.