A large number of students fail when beginning the study of computer programming, and withdraw from courses because of the many difficulties they face while trying to grasp the basic concepts. Programming education is typically based on putting problem-solving skills to use, by identifying a problem, developing an algorithm to tackle it, and coding that algorithm with some programming language, whose syntax and semantics must be learned. Extant research has highlighted the challenges associated with learning/teaching a programming language. However, researchers are still struggling to provide effective guidance to practitioners in this field. We believe that a better understanding of the teaching/learning process in the virtual world Second Life is a potential avenue for using this environment in classes. In this experimental research, we observed and reflected upon the problems that came up and then presented and discussed the results. We conclude with implications for future research and for practicing teachers.

We have conducted a study with higher level education students, in lecture classes of three Undergraduate Courses and one Professional Higher Technical Course that involved six different subjects with a total of 324 students. In this research the use of Game-Based Learning platform was analysed in order to encourage the students’ participation, increasing motivation and keeping them motivated and committed during lessons, therefore, increasing their learning skills. Based on these results, we recommend that Kahoot is used in lectures in order to help students develop their performances and abilities and at the same time be more successful and prepared to have an active participation in society.

This paper presents OOP-Anim, a system to support learning of basic object oriented programming (OOP) concepts. For several reasons, programming is a difficult subject for many students, even in computer science courses. This happens independently of languages and paradigms used. Our system uses program animation to help students overcome some of the difficulties they usually feel to master OOP concepts and associated program dynamic.