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Record W2917386451 · doi:10.1145/3287324.3287496

Program Wars

2019· article· en· W2917386451 on OpenAlexaff
John Anvik, Vincent Côté, Jace Riehl

Bibliographic record

Venuenot available
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldComputer Science
TopicTeaching and Learning Programming
Canadian institutionsUniversity of Lethbridge
Fundersnot available
KeywordsComputer scienceGame programmingVocabularySyntaxComprehensionVideo game designHuman–computer interactionProgramming languageGame DeveloperMultimediaArtificial intelligenceGame designGame design document

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Although there are many computer science learning games with the goal of teaching programming, such games typically require the person to either learn an existing programming language or the game's own specialized language. This can be intimidating, confusing or frustrating for an individual when they cannot get their "program" to work correctly (e.g. syntax error, infinite loop). Additionally, such games commonly use a puzzle-solving approach that does not appeal to some demographics. This paper presents a programming-language-independent approach to teaching fundamental programming and cybersecurity concepts using simple vocabulary. This approach also uses the familiar activity of playing cards against opponents to create a more dynamic and engaging learning experience. The approach is demonstrated by a web-based game called Program Wars. Results from a user study show that players are able to effectively connect game concepts to actual programming language structures; however, whether players' comprehension of computer programming is improved is unclear.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.001
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.008
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Not applicable · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Other · Consensus signal: Other
Teacher disagreement score0.047
Threshold uncertainty score0.156

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0010.008
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.001
Bibliometrics0.0010.001
Science and technology studies0.0020.002
Scholarly communication0.0030.006
Open science0.0010.003
Research integrity0.0010.003
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0470.008

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.006
GPT teacher head0.248
Teacher spread0.242 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designNot applicable
Domainnot available
GenreOther

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations13
Published2019
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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