A Domain-Specific Modelling Language for Adventure Educational Games and Flow Theory

Designing educational games is a complex task and needs collaboration between game developers and an educator. Domain-Specific Modeling Language (DSML) offers an approach to simplify the design activities of educational games and support the involvement of both game developers and educators. This paper presents an extension of Serious Game Logic and Structure Modeling Language (GLiSMo), a DSML that designs the logical and structural views of educational adventure games. The gap in the original GLiSMo is that it did not allow an educational game to be designed according to any learning theories. Furthermore, the original GLiSMo does not cover all concepts in the adventure genre. The authors intend to extend the original GLiSMo by adding the concepts of Flow Theory and concepts of the adventure genre to make it more expressive. The extended DSML is called FA-GLiSMo. The authors evaluated the expressiveness of FA-GLiSMo using Framework for Qualitative Assessment of DSLs (FQAD). The result shows that the expressiveness of FA-GLiSMo is still ‘incomplete’ due to the lack of clarity of semantics for several domain concepts. Improvements were performed, and the finalized FA-GLiSMo now has fifteen (15) concepts of the Logic diagram, nineteen (19) concepts of the Structure diagram, and a new diagram called the Flow diagram containing five (5) concepts of the Flow Theory. The authors also demonstrate in this paper the concrete syntax of FA-GLiSMo using the Tales of Monkey Island game as a case study

The impact of knowledge management in pair programming on program quality

This paper reports on an initiative that determines the most appropriate technique for supporting students’ programming ability.The proposed technique combines pair programming (PP) and SECI process that is a knowledge management (KM) model. Combining PP and SECI resulted in the formation of four approaches, which are named as NSNR, NSYR, YSNR, and YSYR. In those four approaches, the subjects who are students of IT-related programs in a higher learning institution complete a set of programming questions. The approaches were then compared based on the subjects’ scores in their program codes. Descriptive statistics was used to analyze the gathered data. Generally, the results show that switching the roles (driver and navigator) in PP enhances good quality of coding. Through this study, an initial formation of the KM model and programming technique is contributed in enhancing program quality. Further, future work to be considered can be a rigorous theoretical formation for constructing other important determinants to enhance program quality because the findings of this research are minimal to SECI model and pair programming technique only