Project of creating adventure games: learning programming via interdisciplinary collaboration

Interdisciplinary integration and in-depth subject matter content can be the basis of project learning, which is a part of goal-oriented teaching methods and consists of sequences of stages planned in advance such as: idea development, planning, execution of the final product where a student is a central active leader of activities resulting in direct knowledge and discovery. The objective of the master’s degree thesis is to illustrate an example of project-based learning in year four of primary school with the emphasis on interdisciplinary integration and design of adventure computer games with the software tool Odisej. In the theoretical part, besides definition of concepts of interdisciplinary integration and project-based learning, there is research of various models and approaches to planning, arguments for advantages and disadvantages and planning strategies, execution and assessment. The pedagogic research part follows. In the practical part an approach to organization of project-based learning for successful design of the final product such as an adventure computer game is presented. By designing computer games students are faced, in a fun way, with basic concepts of programming where the computer game itself is an excellent motivation for work for the students because of its intertwinement with everyday life and positive attitude towards it and it thus represents a creative environment for expression and storytelling. The empirical part presents an approach, execution and results of the survey where we are interested primarily in answers to questions on frequent use of project-based learning during classes, how project-based learning works in practice and observations of students and teachers who have experienced project-based teaching. My own observations follow next; they originate from actively participating in the teaching process and analysis of an interview with a teacher, which leads to conclusions that with the help of adventure games, which are the final product of project-based learning, we can increase motivation for other subjects that are a part of the topics taught and we can also modernize classic or traditional method of summative knowledge assessment of home reading and at the same time asses higher taxonomic levels. Based on my personal pedagogic experience during my practical training the conclusion is that the use of project-based learning in teaching computer science classes was successful and well received since the students acquired new knowledge and interdisciplinary integration learning goals planned in advance. The pilot use of the software Odisej has confirmed that visual programming tools are suitable for introduction of adventure computer games since students are introduced to basic programming concepts and creatively use multi-level expressions for storytelling through the script of the game