Teaching Loop Testing to Young Learners with the Code Critters Mutation Testing Game

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new game-based approach to teaching loop testing concepts to young learners within the Code Critters platform, demonstrating active engagement and identifying educational challenges.

Contribution

It extends the Code Critters game to include loop-based testing, addressing previous limitations and providing insights into teaching testing concepts to secondary students.

Findings

Students actively engaged with loop-based testing levels

Identified challenges faced by students in understanding loops

Results can inform future educational strategies

Abstract

Serious games can teach essential coding and testing concepts even to younger audiences. In the Code Critter game critters execute short snippets of block-based code while traversing the game map, and players position magical portals (akin to test oracles) at locations (akin to test inputs) to distinguish between critters executing correct code from those who execute faulty code. However, this adaptation of the tower defense genre limits code under test to basic sequences and branches, and excludes the fundamental programming concept of loops. To address this limitation, in this paper we introduce an entirely new game concept integrated into the Code Critters storyline, tasking players to test the behavior of critters collecting ingredients for a healing potion using loop-based recipes at a second-stage level. In a study involving 29 secondary school students, we observed active engagement with these new loop-integrated levels. The results highlight challenges the students face, which can inform future strategies for improving coding and testing education.