Computer Card Games in Computer Science Education: A 10-Year Review

Introduction Computer games, a significant part of human social and cultural environment, seem to attract people's interest, attention and energy (Oblinger, 2004) by enabling players' participation in new, otherwise, inaccessible worlds (Shaffer, Squire, Halverson, & Gee, 2005). Furthermore, players' engagement is enhanced by essential game characteristics, namely, interest, fun, challenge, fantasy, curiosity, and control (Malone, & Lepper, 1987), hence, "flow" experience could be enabled (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). Researchers have acknowledged that Educational Computer Games (ECGs) have the potential to be effective tools for the learning of challenging and complex matters because they are able to: (a) create personal learner motivation and enjoyment, (b) support multiple learning styles and skills, (c) enable active learning, (d) reinforce mastery skills, (e) provide an interactive, problem solving and decision making context, and (f) support exploration and experimentation in a protected environment and learning from the results (Kebritchi, & Hirumi, 2008; Oblinger, 2004). Researchers have also suggested that apart from the game-play learning approach students could construct their own computer games in order to explore new learning concepts in active, meaningful, engaging and effective ways, consider the digital culture from the producer's perspective instead of that of the consumer/player (Kafai, 2001; Ke, 2014) at the same time developing computing and problem-solving skills (van Eck, 2006). Computer Card Games (CCGs) are the modern expression of Card games (CGs) that is a genre of games which have been around for centuries. Specifically, historians have traced playing cards back to the 10th century and most game taxonomies include the large class of CGs (Crawford, 1982). CGs have been also used for educational purposes since the time of Piaget (Kamii & DeVries, 1980). Furthermore, CGs has been used to help students understand and apply basic aspects of developmental psychology and especially the stages of Piaget's theory of cognitive development (Weisskirch, 2003). CGs are also seen as simple games, where players use cards with specific characteristics and concentrate on the forming of appropriate card combinations (Crawford, 1982) while taking into account probability, classification, grouping, comparison and matching issues. In fact, classification activities are central to CG play since players understand the learning concepts under discussion by forming appropriate groups of cards, thus promoting critical thinking, reflection and problem-based learning (Kordaki, 2015). In addition, due to their simplicity in equipment and rules, educational CGs could be used as the entry point for motivating and engaging novice players in the game-based learning experience (Gosper, & McNeil, 2012). Motivation and learning effectiveness are also supported by the competitive elements of CGs. In addition, well-structured CGs can integrate instructional content with the game rules so as to make abstract and complicated concepts intuitive and unambiguous for learners (Su, Cheng, & Lin, 2014). Moreover, appropriately-designed CGs have the potential to improve learners' communicative skills and to promote active learning through interaction with other players (Bochennek, Wittekindt, Zimmermann, & Klingebiel, 2007). At the same time, CGs could also be used to enhance the enforcement of memorization, matching, number manipulation and pattern recognition skills (Oblinger, 2004) while they might also encourage learners' logico-mathematical and interpersonal intelligence (Berger, & Pollman, 1996). As far as educational computer card games (ECCGs) are concerned, in several cases further perspectives on learning and e-learning have emerged through the adoption of new modalities of interaction during CG play. Another noteworthy feature that seems to contribute to the knowledge construction of learners concerns the innovative pedagogical approaches taken into account in the design of several ECCGs (Kordaki, & Gousiou, 2014). …