Exploring How Game Genre in Student-Designed Games Influences Computational Thinking Development

@article{Troiano2020ExploringHG,
  title={Exploring How Game Genre in Student-Designed Games Influences Computational Thinking Development},
  author={Giovanni Maria Troiano and Qinyu Chen and {\'A}ngela Vargas-Alba and Gregorio Robles and Gillian Smith and Michael Cassidy and Eli Tucker-Raymond and Gillian Puttick and Casper Harteveld},
  journal={Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
  year={2020}
}
Game design is increasingly used in modern education to foster Computational Thinking (CT). Yet, it is unclear how and if the game genre of student-designed games impact CT and programming. We explore how game genre impacts CT development and programming routines in Scratch games designed by 8th-grade students using a metrics-based approach (i.e., Dr. Scratch). Our findings show that designing particular games (e.g., action, storytelling) impact CT and programming development. We observe, for… 
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