Robot ON!

A number of educational games have been created to help students programming. Many of these games focus on problem solving and the actual act of writing programs, while very few focus on programming comprehension. Unlike other serious programming games, Robot ON! focuses on comprehension rather than problem-solving challenges; players do not actually write any programs, but are instead given the task of demonstrating their knowledge and understanding of a program’s behaviour. Robot ON! includes tools that allow players to demonstrate understanding of variable values, data types, program statements, and control flow.

The player has access to five debugging tools that are used at different points in the game:

Beacon Activator

The Beacon Activator tasks require the player to indicate which lines of code are executed and in which order.

Checker

The Checker tasks require the player to follow the code and answer the prompt that appears, which asks code-specific questions.

Renamer

The Renamer tasks require the player to select appropriate variable or function names for the context of the code.

Commenter

The Commenter tasks require the player to determine which comments are valid and which are false or misleading.

Reviewer

The Reviewer tasks require the player to assess commented out code and assess which lines of code are formatted correctly.