Game2Learn: Improving the motivation of CS1 students

I liked this article. I feel it is exploring the same sort of concepts that we are planning on doing.

The examples they give for their "Saving Sera" game are neat. I think we would want to plan to do something along those lines (Using gamemaker, or learning about this RPGmaker, which might be more what we're looking for)....things like "correctly reorganizing a while loop statement of a confused old fisherman's mind; correcting a nested for loop placing eggs; and visually piecing together a quicksort algorithm. When the player makes a mistake, the character must fight a script bug, which asks the users various computer science questions..." (page 2)

Neat ideas.

I think the most important information I pulled out of this is that feedback (and clear goals) are very important in the game. Without them, some students seemed to question the seriousness of learning through games. It seems that they also help keep students motivated to play (and learn).