Effects of Competitive Coding Games on Novice Programmers

Coding platforms provide challenges for users to solve in order to improve their programming skills, utilizing elements of both Technology Enhanced Learning and gamification. Inspired by previous approaches, this article presents a coding platform focused on competition, and its evaluation in the context of tertiary programming education. The system provides programming challenges for two users to compete against each other in real time. We seek to answer the question whether this notion of one-on-one competition can increase motivation to solve programming tasks. Two user studies were conducted in order to evaluate the effects of the system’s competitive component on users’ self-assessment, enjoyment, and motivation.