A Solution of the Mastermind Board Game in Scratch Suitable for Education - Results of the Preliminary Case Study

AUTHOR(S):

Tomas Hornik, Petr Coufal, Michal Musilek, Stepan Hubalovsky

TITLE

A Solution of the Mastermind Board Game in Scratch Suitable for Education - Results of the Preliminary Case Study

ABSTRACT

The article is a case study of a specific problem - popular board game Mastermind and its solution in Scratch, visual online programming language. A preliminary version of this paper was presented at APSAC 2017. Emphasis is put on the educational perspective both in the logic behind the solution itself and on the way the problem can be presented to elementary school pupils. The article is focused on logical explanation of the solution and on work with several specific programming elements, like IF-ELSE conditions, data structures and simple bug hunting feature. The difficulty is suitable for elementary school pupils as a complex task meant for superior individuals or a group of pupils. It was successfully tested as a small scale preliminary study conducted on pupils aged between 12 and 15 at an extracurricular group. The results of the qualitative research are presented at the end of this paper.

KEYWORDS

Algorithmic Thinking, Algorithm Development, Education, Elementary School, Mastermind Game Solution, Programming, Scratch, Educational Programming Languages

REFERENCES

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Cite this paper

Tomas Hornik, Petr Coufal, Michal Musilek, Stepan Hubalovsky. (2017) A Solution of the Mastermind Board Game in Scratch Suitable for Education - Results of the Preliminary Case Study. International Journal of Computers, 2, 214-219