Title Leveraging large language models to support authoring gamified programming exercises /
Authors Montella, Raffaele ; De Vita, Ciro Giuseppe ; Mellone, Gennaro ; Ciricillo, Tullio ; Caramiello, Dario ; Di Luccio, Diana ; Kosta, Sokol ; Damaševičius, Robertas ; Maskeliūnas, Rytis ; Queirós, Ricardo ; Swacha, Jakub
DOI 10.3390/app14188344
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Is Part of Applied sciences.. Basel : MDPI. 2024, vol. 14, iss. 18, art. no. 8344, p. 1-15.. ISSN 2076-3417
Keywords [eng] artificial intelligence ; educational tools ; gamification ; programming education
Abstract [eng] Featured Application: The presented solution can be applied to simplify and hasten the development of gamified programming exercises conforming to the Framework for Gamified Programming Education (FGPE) standard. Skilled programmers are in high demand, and a critical obstacle to satisfying this demand is the difficulty of acquiring programming skills. This issue can be addressed with automated assessment, which gives fast feedback to students trying to code, and gamification, which motivates them to intensify their learning efforts. Although some collections of gamified programming exercises are available, producing new ones is very demanding. This paper presents GAMAI, an AI-powered exercise gamifier, enriching the Framework for Gamified Programming Education (FGPE) ecosystem. Leveraging large language models, GAMAI enables teachers to effortlessly apply storytelling to describe a gamified scenario, as GAMAI decorates natural language text with the sentences needed by OpenAI APIs to contextualize the prompt. Once a gamified scenario has been generated, GAMAI automatically produces exercise files in a FGPE-compatible format. According to the presented evaluation results, most gamified exercises generated with AI support were ready to be used, with no or minimum human effort, and were positively assessed by students. The usability of the software was also assessed as high by the users. Our research paves the way for a more efficient and interactive approach to programming education, leveraging the capabilities of advanced language models in conjunction with gamification principles.
Published Basel : MDPI
Type Journal article
Language English
Publication date 2024
CC license CC license description