MazeStar: platform for studying virtual identity and computer science education

Abstract

This paper presents an overview of the MazeStar platform for Computer Science education. MazeStar is both a game (Mazzy) that teaches programming concepts like loops and conditionals, and a game editor which allows players to create and share their own game levels. By playing and creating, players are using computing concepts (e.g., block structuring, parallelism, etc.) and computing practices (e.g., debugging, iterative prototyping, etc.). To date the MazeStar platform has been used in controlled user studies involving > 10,000 participants. Here, our goal is to detail the different components of the MazeStar platform, and how we have/are leveraging these components to study the interplay of education, games/game-making, and virtual identity.