iThinkSmart: Immersive Virtual Reality Mini Games to Facilitate Students’ Computational Thinking Skills Friday Joseph Agbo* School of Computing, University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland friday.agbo@uef.f Solomon Sunday Oyelere Department of Computer Science, Electrical and Space Engineering, Luleå University of Technology, Sweden solomon.oyelere@ltu.se Jarkko Suhonen School of Computing, University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland jarkko.suhonen@uef.f Markku Tukiainen School of Computing, University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland markku.tukiainen@uef.f ABSTRACT This paper presents iThinkSmart, an immersive virtual reality-based application to facilitate the learning of computational thinking (CT) concepts. The tool was developed to supplement the traditional teaching and learning of CT by integrating three virtual mini games, namely, River Crossing, Tower of Hanoi, and Mount Patti treasure hunt, to foster immersion, interaction, engagement, and person- alization for an enhanced learning experience. iThinkSmart mini games can be played on a smartphone with a Goggle Cardboard and hand controller. This frst prototype of the game accesses play- ers’ competency of CT and renders feedback based on learning progress. CCS CONCEPTS · ; · Human-centered computing → Visualization; Visualization design and evaluation methods; · General and reference → Cross- computing tools and techniques; Design; KEYWORDS Computational thinking, Computing education, iThinkSmart, Im- mersive virtual reality, game-based learning, VR, HMD ACM Reference Format: Friday Joseph Agbo*, Solomon Sunday Oyelere, Jarkko Suhonen, and Markku Tukiainen. 2021. iThinkSmart: Immersive Virtual Reality Mini Games to Facilitate Students’ Computational Thinking Skills. In 21st Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research (Koli Call- ing ’21), November 18–21, 2021, Joensuu, Finland. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 3 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3488042.3489963 1 INTRODUCTION The proliferation of immersive virtual reality (IVR) applications to facilitate learning and teaching is increasingly gaining ground nowadays [1]. IVR application provides a perception of being phys- ically present in a virtual world, tricking the brain to have the sense Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for proft or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the frst page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the owner/author(s). Koli Calling ’21, November 18–21, 2021, Joensuu, Finland © 2021 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-8488-9/21/11. https://doi.org/10.1145/3488042.3489963 of real-world experience. Computational thinking (CT) generally refers to the thought process involved in solving problems that are replete in human daily life [2ś4]. CT concepts covers numerous aspects, which include problem decomposition, problem abstrac- tion, algorithmic thinking, pattern recognition, recursion, and more. These topics are often taught superfcially within a context that may remain abstract and difcult for learners to comprehend. To visual- ize these concepts of CT, this study developed an IVR application embedded with expedition and mini games to trigger learner’s moti- vation, engagement, and immersive experience [12], while gaining knowledge to improve on problem-solving skills. Aside from visual- izing the teaching and learning of CT concepts, many previous tools to facilitate CT rarely can produce quantifable evidence of students’ learning outcomes during the gameplay [5][6], a gap which this study tries to fll. This study is a step towards the augmentation of technology-enhanced learning to supplement the traditional teach- ing of concepts that are often difcult to comprehend by novice students in programming classes. 2 RELATED WORK Recently, several studies have developed IVR applications to fa- cilitate education including CT skills, which presents a positive future for the maturing feld of virtual environments for learning and teaching at all levels of education [10]. For example, Segura et al. [5] developed IVR application called VR-OCKS to teach stu- dents basic concepts of programming through block-based. Kim et al. [9] developed IVR application called GardenVR to support vocational students’ design thinking skills. Hooshyar et al. [6] de- veloped an adaptive digital computer game to facilitate CT through personalized features such as visualized hints, feedbacks, and tuto- rials. Bouali et al. [8] demonstrated the teaching of object-oriented programming (OOP) concepts through visualization within a 3D game-based virtual reality application (Imikode). Malizia et al. [13] developed a virtual reality game - TAPASPlay ś to facilitate CT skills such as problem abstraction and decomposition. An experiment with students using TAPASPlay shows that game-based approach can foster CT and collaborative learning [14]. All these studies show the opportunity of deploying immersive virtual reality games in teaching and learning.