2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Summer camps offer valuable opportunities for broadening participation in computing, connecting institutions with communities while helping students explore new ideas and learn. For instance, high school computer science camps focused on skill development can better prepare students for technical degrees, yet organizers of large multi-section camps face a specific challenge: how to place students in the right section.

Our coding camp at a large midwestern university faced this issue with two sections: a Java portion for beginners and a Python portion for intermediate data science applications requiring AP CSA-level knowledge. Placement based purely on AP course completion may struggle to capture true programming ability, but the students themselves are generally unequipped to judge their own readiness. If a student is initially placed in a misaligned section for their coding competency level, that student can begin to have a very negative experience, either becoming bored or falling rapidly behind, but there is no easy remediation by offering switching sections as few students would choose to draw any attention or leave a new potential friend group.

We developed "Ricky Robot's Journey Home," a multi-format gamified assessment and learning tool to evaluate programming concepts through both paper and digital experiences. The activity follows Ricky the Robot's story after his spaceship crashes. First, students complete paper-based Java tasks (e.g., demonstrating string processing through a 'signal decoder' task), aligned with AP CSA outcomes. Then, after a brief Python lecture covering critical concepts and syntax, they transition to an online game where they navigate Ricky through levels to locate ship components. Each component requires implementing Python functions evaluated via unit tests, with sufficient solutions unlocking the path to victory.

To our knowledge, this is the first implementation of a dual-format (paper and digital) gamified assessment for programming skill evaluation in high school summer camps that specifically uses: (1) a unified narrative across both formats, (2) cross-language transfer assessment, and (3) an auto-graded digital platform to support sustained learning. Supporting the value of the narrative and gameplay, qualitative observations indicated that students enjoyed the game so much they requested additional levels to practice advanced concepts. Quantitatively, we aggregated across the paper-based Java assessments and digital-based Python coding interactions (e.g., number of submissions) to explore trends; we found that there is a statistically significant difference in the way students across competency levels engaged with the software, with those exhibiting higher code proficiency being far more willing to try ideas and test often, informing potential pedagogical enhancements.