Using a Serious Video Game to Support the Learning of Tree Traversals

Abstract

This paper presents a piece of serious video game, denominated as Tree Legends with UnityChan, which has been developed with the objective of supporting the learning of Tree Traversals. This educational proposal increases the learners’ motivation by including gamification, through learning points that can be earned with each successfully completed mission. The serious video game was evaluated by means of a formal experiment, which was carried out with Discrete Mathematics students at a higher education institution in Mexico, where two groups were formed randomly: A control group, whose members attended classes and reinforced their knowledge in a traditional manner with a pencil and paper, and an experimental group, which learned receiving the same classes as the control group, but reinforcing what they had learned using the serious video game. The statistical results obtained indicate that the use of Tree Legends with UnityChan has a positive and motivating effect on learning and that a greater academic performance is achieved than when the traditional learning reinforcement method is applied.