Effects of a Educational Programming Board Game Competitions Using Robots on humanities students

Abstract

In recent years, programming education has become mandatory in elementary, junior high, and high schools, and many educational institutions are using board games to teach programming thinking. The advantages of board games include the ability to learn in a stress-free environment while having fun with others, which can stimulate the desire to learn. However, board games inherently require the presence of an opponent to play with, and it is not always guaranteed that opponent will be available at home. Therefore, this study developed an educational support robot to play programming education board games with students. In this experiment, we investigated the learning effects of playing against this robot on humanities students who had no prior experience with programming. The results showed that competing against the robot provided higher learning effectiveness for humanities students compared to competing against human opponents.