Learning While Playing: Introducing Programming Concepts to Children in Minecraft

Children’s interest in playing popular video games could be utilized for learning and educational purposes. The entertaining and interactive learning environments of digital games can facilitate the learning of a variety of challenging subjects. This paper presents the Creative Programmer, which is a Minecraft modification (Mod) that takes an advantage of the popularity of Minecraft game among children to teach them basic computer programming concepts. This mod targets children aged between (5- 15). The effectiveness of this Mod was tested using a pre and post quizzes. The results indicate that children who did not have any previous knowledge of programming answered most of the test questions correctly, while the performance level of children who were familiar with programming improved in the post-quiz compared to the pre-quiz. Moreover, it has been observed that the familiarity of the Minecraft environment made learning more enjoyable and enhanced the knowledge gaining process.