Educational Games for Computational Thinking: Evaluation of the Scaffolded aMazeD Game

Computational Thinking (CT) has recently gained increased interest from educational and academic world. The intense interest in CT has led to the utilization and design of a variety of learning tools, with particular interest given to digital games. Several studies are investigating their effectiveness in learning CT, however more research is needed on the specific features of these tools, such as scaffolding features. This study evaluates a scaffolding educational game and investigates how middle school students perceive the effectiveness of its scaffolding features. For this purpose, 28 middle school students participated in an educational intervention. The study adopts a survey research approach. The results regarding ease of use, usefulness, attitude, accessibility and overall experience of the scaffolded game are promising. Specifically, students found scaffolding features of the game, useful for solving the game and effective in learning CT.