GameCode: Choose your Own Problem Solving Path

This abstract focuses on a CS2 course in which gamified homework exercises are provided to students instead of in-class exercise sessions. The course, provided to first-year Computer Science students, introduces a rigorous methodology to write programs using Loop Invariants, recursion, and basic data structures such as Files, Lists, Queues, and Stacks. In early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic caused a lock-down in our country. The universities decided to fully switch to remote teaching. As the exercises sessions previously consisted of solving problems on a blackboard, we had to design in a hurry course materials that would cope with remote teaching. Instead of giving students yet another podcast in their course schedule, we gave them homework exercises, we called GameCode, that they could do at their own convenience. These exercises are inspired by GameBooks in which the reader can choose the path she takes to complete the story. With GameCode, students can choose their own solving path for each exercise. This can be related to gamification.