Integrating The Arcs Motivational Elements Into An On-Line Game-Based Learning Application: Does The Application Enhance Students’ Motivation In Learning Programming?

Conventional classroom teaching and learning of programming tends to be didactic, which is usually tends to be monotonous and less interesting. In learning programming – a subject that is deemed extremely challenging to master – such a situation can have a serious repercussion in that students can easily become unmotivated and demoralized to learn. As such, students need to use relevant learning tools that can stimulate and motivate them to learn such a course. Of late, many researchers have started using online game-based learning (GBL) tools to improve students’ motivation and performance. Invariably, most of the studies mainly focused on GBL tools to move avatars. As such, this study focuses on programming as the activities in such a game. In this study, the researchers used the prototyping model to develop an online GBL application called Prog-GBL by integrating the elements of mastery learning approach and ARCS model to help motivate students in learning programming. The evaluation of the Prog-GBL was carried out through a survey involving 30 students from one public university in Perak, Malaysia. The research findings showed that the use of such an online learning tool helped improve students’ motivation in learning programming. More revealingly, the four elements of ARCS, namely attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction were highly rated by the students, suggesting that the use of Prog-GBL can motivate students to learn the subject matter.