Tabletop games designed to promote computational thinking

ABSTRACT

There is a growing perception that computational thinking can be developed in unplugged environments. A recent trend among these unplugged approaches is the use of tabletop games. While there are many commercial tabletop games on the market that are promoted as teaching computer science and/or computational skills, little is known about how these games are supposed to support learning. This study investigates the types of tabletop games that are currently being promoted as teaching computational thinking, who such games are marketed towards, and how game designs could provide opportunities for developing computational thinking. We conducted a content analysis to explore the type of tabletop games currently being created, their audiences, and the kinds of game mechanics and design features being implemented to teach computational thinking concepts. In this study, we created a taxonomy of computational thinking tabletop games that identified three primary categories (e.g. code building, code execution, and puzzle games) . Games that fall into our categories share similar learning claims, target audiences, and game mechanics. Our taxonomy offers a starting place for educators who want to explore the use of tabletop games for introducing computational thinking concepts in unplugged settings, suggestions for designers, and areas of investigation for researchers.

KEYWORDS:

• Tabletop games
• computational thinking
• content analysis

Acknowledgments

This paper was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) grant #1837224. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the National Science Foundation. The authors thank Matthew Berland, Shuchi Grover, and Yasmin Kafai for encouraging a categorization and illustration of current commercial computer science board game types be completed and disseminated for the field of CS Education.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, [F.J.P], upon reasonable request.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services [RE-31-16-0013-16]; National Science Foundation [DRL-1837224].This work was supported by National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant number 1837224.