You can't Escape Learning, but Maybe you can get out of the room! – Game-based Learning for Programming Education.

Programming education has been classified as problematic learning in higher education, and in the current process of reaching a younger audience there are several challenges. Three of them that are highlighted in this paper are learner motivation, visualisation, and the need for engaging self-learning. To address these challenges this study builds upon a combination of the old idea of game-based learning, and the new trend with escape rooms for educational purposes. The overall aim of the study is to design, develop, and evaluate a game where players can learn about fundamental programming techniques such as variables, data collections, selection and iteration. In the first step a web-based game prototype has been created and tested on teachers in K-12 education, and on teachers in the Makerspace movement. The main research question to answer was: "What are the teacher perceptions about important design factors for an escape room game on computer programming?". This study was conducted with a design science approach involving the recommended steps of 1) Explicating the problem, 2) Defining the requirements, 3) Design and development of an artefact, 4) Demonstrating the artefact, and 5) Evaluation of the artefact. The requirement specification was built around the syllabus framework recommended from the Swedish National Agency for Education. Evaluation data were divided into categories in an inductive thematic analysis, and later compared with design factor found in other studies on educational games for programming education. Preliminary findings show a mixture of attitudes among the teachers in the test group, there are also several suggestions for further development. The two important next steps are to 1) Test the prototype on students, with help from the teachers in the test group, and 2) To refine the prototype and develop the game further to meet the standard of games that K-12 students and Makerspace kids play. To obtain a high-quality outcome of the second next step, there is probably a need for a shift to a more professional development environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]