Teaching Large Introductory Computer Science Courses in a 2D Gameworld

What is it about?

Using a game world as a teaching environment in introductory Computer Science courses, to support social learning. This world allows instructors to have students working in teams (like breakout rooms on zoom), but in a much more flexible way. Students can ask questions from within their teams that the whole class can hear. Students can move in and out of teams and mingle with other students to discuss course content. Student work can be displayed on the walls of the space.

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Why is it important?

Online learning can be really depersonalized and very isolating for students. Supporting social learning is really important, but it is very difficult to do in platforms such as Zoom/Webex/MSTeams. None of these platforms support student agency - students can't easily move around and mingle with each other. They have very little opportunity to express themselves. And communication between instructors and students in typical video-conferencing platforms require instructors to pull all students out of breakout teams in order to talk to the whole class at once. Using the Gather.Town platform alleviates these issues. Communication is much more efficient and students have agency in who and where in the platform they interact. Ongoing research will investigate the impacts on student engagement and learning.

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