About the Platform

Enhancing the Student Experience in learning computer programming

The competition platform has been developed by Dr James Heather as part of a University of Surrey SCEPTrE Fellowship.

"I think one of the reasons students struggle with programming is that the tasks that we set them are generally quite tedious and artificial and you don't get much satisfaction out of completing them. What I've tried to do with this system is to create an environment where students can compete against each other and compete at something that is intrinsically fun, games that they like to play anyway." - Dr James Heather, University of Surrey.

The Fellowship enhances the learning experience for Computing (and other) students who are learning programming, by providing a forum in which students can interact on interesting and clearly defined programming tasks relating to turn-based strategy games. The games range in their complexity from Tic-Tac-Toe at the simplest end through to Draughts or even Chess at the high end.

Students are able to download a small package for any of the supported games, Four-in-a-Row for the purpose of the BCS Student Contest, and use it to develop their own program that can act as a player for the game. The input to the program is a board position, and the program outputs the move it wishes to play.

The students then upload their programs to the web site. The web site keeps track of the uploaded 'player' programs, and then hosts games between the programs, constructing a database of all the games, and a league table to show how each program performs.

If your school, college or university is interested in using the test platform in your own teaching/competition, please get in touch with Dr James Heather