Analyzing the Impact of Leaderboards in Introductory Programming Courses' Short-Length Activities.

This Research Full Paper presents results from gamified in-class interventions with leaderboards. Generally, it is assumed that student expertise is directly related to deliberate and repeated practice. However, finding techniques that foster student engagement in problem-solving may not be the easiest of tasks. To that end, gamification, also known as the use of game design elements in non-game contexts, has proved to be effective in educational scenarios. Concerned with stimulating student engagement in Computer Science, this research aimed to observe the effect of the insertion of leaderboards in short-length in-class experiments performed in two different terms of undergraduate IP courses. N = 84 students were randomly allocated into one of two types of group: experimental groups with leaderboards; and control groups without knowledge of nor access to leaderboards. Both experiments showed that students in the experimental groups tried and completed more programming problems, on average, than those from their respective control groups. P-values below alpha = 5% indicated a real impact from the leaderboard in students' performances. This research may benefit educators responsible for IP courses that have an online platform at their disposal, by introducing a design of leaderboard that incites student engagement, at least for short-length activities.