FOR PLAY

Many students drop out of computer science programs, in part, because they find the work to be tedious and boring. Incorporating play into the learning process can help make learning how to program more fun. To bring the joy of programming to more students, I present the educational browser game For Play. The game helps players learn to write code using several common programming patterns that use for loops, a common programming construct that facilitates executing repeated code. For Play is designed using research from game design to make it fun and engaging and research from computer science pedagogy to improve learning outcomes.