Metaverse and Virtual Reality Integration in Computer Science

This article presents a systematic literature review on escape rooms as a didactic tool for teaching and learning programming. The review examined the programming topics and languages addressed, the educational levels targeted, evaluation methods used and key design elements such as format, duration, location and narrative structure. Methodological quality was assessed using the MMAT and GRADE frameworks to determine the strength and reliability of the included studies. Findings indicate that while educational escape rooms show strong potential to support programming education through active, experiential learning, the current body of research is relatively small and still developing. The topics covered included basic programming concepts, web development and data analysis. Most escape rooms were implemented in higher education contexts and delivered in various formats (physical, fully virtual or hybrid), often incorporating digital tools and physical elements to enhance immersion. Although motivational and engagement benefits were consistently reported across studies, the majority relied heavily on post‐activity perception surveys for evaluation. Only a few studies used more objective assessments such as pre/post‐tests or learning analytics. Notably, no study included delayed post‐tests or longitudinal follow‐ups, and only a small number explored teamwork, collaboration or problem‐solving strategies in depth. Consequently, the overall certainty of evidence on measurable learning outcomes remains low to moderate. Context and implications Rationale for this study: Learning programming is challenging, and traditional teaching often falls short. Game‐based learning, particularly educational escape rooms, may help, yet no prior review has focused on programming. Why the new findings matter: This study shows escape rooms boost engagement and motivation, though current research remains small‐scale, beginner‐focused, and methodologically weak, limiting evidence of lasting learning impact. Implications for researchers and educational institutions: For educators, escape rooms provide a promising and adaptable method for teaching programming and teamwork skills, but they must be firmly grounded in established learning theories, embedded into curricula, and evaluated through robust mixed‐methods approaches. Researchers should extend the scope beyond introductory content to include advanced topics, a wider range of learner demographics and long‐term outcomes that assess retention and skill transfer. Policy‐makers and funders can help scale these initiatives by investing in educator training, developing accessible design tools and fostering cross‐institutional collaborations. Such efforts will ensure escape rooms are inclusive, evidence‐based and capable of delivering meaningful, sustainable learning impacts.

Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm in which programs are organized as cooperative collections of object. Learning the object-oriented approach is however difficult for novice students, mostly because the concepts of object, class and inheritance are abstract in nature. The main objective of this article is to present the design and validation of a learning environment for learning the concepts of object-oriented programming. The learning environment is based on Polya's heuristic method for solving problems. The validation process was performed using a pretest and post-test applied to two groups: control and experimental. The results given in the validation demonstrate evidence that experimental group recorded a higher level of consolidation of the concepts of object-oriented programming.

Background. Programming is widely known to be a cognitively demanding field. Learning programming can be a strenuous task without the proper guidance and methodology. Students often face difficulties in understanding even the most basic and fundamental concepts of programming, leading to their confusion and disappointment. Serious games for programming have the potential to alleviate students’ difficulties with programming. Aim. This article introduces a new serious game named jAVANT-GARDE which aims to educate the player on the basic concepts of programming and object-oriented programming through Java. By design, the game is suitable for everyone, even for players with no previous knowledge of programming. This article aims to present important information regarding the design, implementation and pilot evaluation of jAVANT-GARDE. Method. The game was evaluated by 42 high school students (age 16-17) in terms of perceived player experience and short-term learning. The participants played the game for one hour in the school lab and then answered a questionnaire based on the MEEGA+ framework. Results. Students evaluated positively the game in terms of its usability, confidence in playing the game, challenge, satisfaction, fun, focused attention and relevance. Moreover, the majority of students stated that would prefer learning programming with this game to learning through other teaching methods. Conclusions. The results of the pilot study and students’ replies in the questionnaire are rather positive. This gives us the initiative to proceed with studying the effect of the game in long-term learning of programming concepts.

The notations of class, subclass and virtual procedure are fairly well understood and recognized as some of the key concepts in object-oriented programming. The possibility of modifying a virtual procedure in a subclass is a powerful technique for specializing the general properties of the superclass.<p>In most object-oriented languages, the attributes of an object may be references to objects and (virtual) procedures. In Simula and BETA it is also possible to have class attributes. The power of class attributes has not yet been widely recognized. In BETA a class may also have <em>virtual class attributes</em>. This makes it possible to defer part of the specification of a class attribute to a subclass. In this sense virtual classes are analogous to virtual procedures. Virtual classes are mainly interesting within strongly typed languages where they provide a mechanism for defining general parameterized classes such as set, vector and list. In this sense they provide an alternative to generics. Although the notion of virtual class originates from BETA, it is presented as a general language mechanism.</p>

BACKGROUND:Clinical evaluation utilizing the escape room game is recognized as a novel method for assessing the team-oriented performance of learners. It is a tool for evaluating teamwork skills in clinical settings, which can boost student motivation and learning. This study aimed to investigate the effect of clinical evaluation through escape rooms and feedback provision through the PEARLS (promoting excellence and reflective learning in simulation) approach on pre-internship nursing students’ satisfaction, learning, and preparedness to practice as interns.MATERIALS AND METHOD:The current research is a quasi-experimental quantitative study conducted with a census sample of 42 sixth-semester undergraduate nursing students in 2022. The escape room method was utilized to evaluate entry preparedness into the clinical field. Reliable and valid researcher-made questionnaires were administered to assess the impact of the intervention on learning, satisfaction, and preparedness. The data were analyzed in SPSS version 26 using descriptive and inferential tests. The significance level was considered to be less than 0.05.RESULTS:Twenty-six males and 16 females constituted the 42 participants (mean age: 23.46 years). The clinical evaluation method of the escape room game was deemed satisfactory or highly satisfactory by 80% of students. From the perspective of 72% of students, escape rooms were definitely or highly effective in shaping their preparedness to enter the clinical field. Comparing the students’ mean learning scores (self-assessment of clinical skills) before and after the test revealed that their post-test scores (55/16 ± 13/33) were significantly higher than their pre-test scores (45/58 ± 16/58) (P < 0.001).CONCLUSIONS:It appears that using the escape room evaluation method in conjunction with other student evaluation methods has helped improve students’ interpersonal communication, problem-solving skills, critical thinking, and teamwork. The experience of working in a group not only improves these skills and is enjoyable to students but can also enhance their learning. Clinical education is dependent on teamwork. The escape room test can be viewed as a valuable tool for encouraging students to collaborate as a team. Therefore, it is suggested that students in all medical education groups be evaluated clinically using this test.

Aim Simulation-based surgical education in the form of an Escape room is a well-published method of teaching surgical content and skills. However, little has been published on the use of Kirkpatrick model in the design of basic surgical skills as part of foundation doctors’ induction. We wanted to evaluate the use of an educational escape room for teaching surgical skills as part of foundation doctors’ induction. Method We designed and implemented an escape room for the Induction programme of Foundation Year One doctors in the United Kingdom at our local district general hospital. In groups, the doctors had to work through several tasks including gowning and gloving, knot tying and suturing in order to "escape the room". Pre- and post-session feedback were collected as surveys using Likert scale and semi-structured free-text questions were thematically analysed. Kirkpatrick model was used as a method of designing and evaluating the study. Results In total, 11/24 participants completed the feedback forms. On a scale of 1-5 where 1 is strongly agree and 5 is strongly disagree, 9/11 agreed they found escape rooms as a useful method for learning, and 10/11 understood how to scrub in, placing interrupted sutures; all felt confident in putting a hand-tie. Participants highly recommended this for future training. We were unable to evaluate longer term wider impact of this project within the wider surgical team. Conclusions Our pilot study indicates that the Kirkpatrick model is useful in the design and evaluation of in the use of Escape room in teaching basic surgical skills induction.

A description is given of some difficulties that one encounters in the testing and maintenance of C++ programs, which may result in program unreliability. Inheritance and polymorphism are key concepts in object-oriented programming (OOP), and are essential for achieving reusability and extendibility, but they also make programs more difficult to understand. The authors show by arguments and by some empirical evidence that widely used complexity metrics like lines of code, cyclomatic complexity, and Software Science's metrics may not be appropriate to measure the complexity of C++ programs and those written in other object-oriented languages, since they do not address concepts like inheritance and encapsulation, apart from having other weaknesses. Some measures using a notion from the world of functional decomposition-coupling, are defined for C++ programs. Two of them-CC and AMC-and equivalent ones for the three widely used complexity metrics (for comparison) are computed for five C++ programs. Preliminary results show that the coupling measures correlate better with difficulty of testing and maintenance than the three widely used complexity metrics. >

Immersive virtual reality (VR) enhances ecological validity and facilitates intuitive and ergonomic hand interactions for performing neuropsychological assessments. However, its comparability to traditional computerized methods remains unclear. This study investigates the convergent validity, user experience and usability of VR-based versus PC-based assessments of short-term and working memory, as well as psychomotor skills, while also examining how demographic and IT-related skills influence performance in both modalities. Sixty-six participants performed the Digit Span Task (DST), Corsi Block Task (CBT) and Deary-Liewald Reaction Time Task (DLRTT) in both VR- and PC-based formats. Participants' experience in using computers and smartphones, and playing videogames, was considered. User experience and system usability of the formats were also evaluated. While performance on DST was similar across modalities, PC assessments enabled better performance on CBT and faster reaction times in DLRTT. Significant correlations between VR and PC versions supported convergent validity. Regression analyses revealed that performance on PC versions was influenced by computing and gaming experience, whereas performance on VR versions was largely independent of these factors, except for gaming experience predicting performance on CBT backward recall. Moreover, VR assessments received higher ratings for user experience and usability than PC-based assessments. Immersive VR assessments provide an engaging alternative to traditional computerized methods, with minimal reliance on prior IT experience and demographic factors. This resilience to individual differences suggests that VR may offer a more equitable and accessible platform for automated cognitive assessment. Future research should explore the long-term reliability of VR-based assessments.

Research has been undertaken to answer the following question: Can icon-based programming languages be used to teach first year programming concepts to undergraduate students more effectively than text-based languages? BACCII++ is an iconic environment developed at Texas Tech University for teaching procedural and object-oriented programming concepts and languages. Course materials were developed and used under experimental conditions during the 1995-96 school year at Texas Tech University, with half using BACCII++ to generate C++ code, and the other half using only C++. For each course in each semester the experiment was run, the sections using BACCII++ did significantly better in overall performance.

Despite the fact that pedagogical programming environments have been available for several years, some fundamental concepts of object-oriented programming and design, such as encapsulation, interfaces, polymorphism, and inheritance, are not addressed by existing tools to a full extent. This paper presents novel interaction metaphors embodied in tool support that, as opposed to existing tools, makes possible to illustrate such object-oriented programming concepts with first-class representations. A tool referred to as AguiaJ, which is being used at our institution for the past three years, embodies novel interaction metaphors for addressing the aforementioned concepts in a gradual and comprehensive way. We explain the innovative tool features using a running example involving the domain of image manipulation.

BackgroundDigital escape rooms have been developed during the pandemic, which improves students’ cooperation, communication skills, and critical thinking skills, effects on learning in nursing education.MethodThis study aimed to evaluate the GestDia escape room to assess students’ motivation and self-confidence in learning. A descriptive quantitative interventional study was carried out. The study population was nursing students in their third semester (n = 45). The students filled out the Instructional Materials Motivation Survey and Student Satisfaction and Self-Confidence in Learning Scale.ResultsThe mean scores obtained from motivation, satisfaction, and self-confidence scales were generally higher. Males scored higher on all scales than females, though these differences were not statistically significant (p > 0.05).ConclusionIn general, although games increase students’ motivation, satisfaction, and self-confidence, they can lead to gender differences. In the digital world, integrating escape rooms into nursing education can add joy to students’ learning process.

Introduction: Increasingly adopted in healthcare education for their ability to engage learners, develop teamwork and critical thinking skills, escape rooms are defined as ‘live-action, team-based games where players discover clues, solve puzzles, and accomplish tasks in one or more rooms in order to accomplish a specific goal’ [1]. The literature suggests that escape rooms have the potential to engage learners[2,3]. Our simulation team, consisting of academic and simulation technicians, created a virtual escape room using IntuifaceTM software for our immersive learning environment. This interactive touchscreen experience allowed nursing students to practice critical thinking, communication, and teamwork as they navigated a virtual patient’s home, consisting of a linear storyline of puzzles within a 40-minute limit. These were focused on wound assessment and management. Methods: This learning experience involved groups of up to 12 students, structured with rotating participation of 5-6 active learners, and 5-6 active observers who contributed suggestions and insights. Solving the sequential puzzles demanded effective teamwork, clear communication, and the application of knowledge relevant to the scenario’s phases: history taking, information gathering, the correct utilization of wound assessment tools, and the selection of appropriate wound dressings. A simulation technician facilitated the technical operation, while an academic facilitator guided the in-experience discussions and debriefing to enhance learning. Results: Feedback was collected from participants at the end of each session via a QR code. A total of 6 sessions were delivered in 1 day. 65 students took part, with 31 completing the evaluation form (response rate of 47.7%). Overall, student feedback indicated a positive learning experience and participants reported high levels of enjoyment and engagement with the activities, with evidence of perceptions of successful teamwork and communication. Additionally, at least one student noted the development of valuable skills such as critical thinking and problem-solving. The unique and fun nature of the session appears to have contributed to this learning opportunity, see Figure 1. Discussion: The feedback identified a potential area for improvement which was highlighted by “more time and guidance”, suggesting that some students may have felt pressed for time, or required additional support to fully benefit from the activities. This warrants consideration in future session planning to ensure adequate time allocation and appropriate levels of guidance are provided to accommodate all learners. Despite this point for potential enhancement, the feedback suggests the learning experience was innovative and well-received by the participating students, and will be embedded in future nursing curricula. Ethics Statement: As the submitting author, I can confirm that all relevant ethical standards of research and dissemination have been met. Additionally, I can confirm that the necessary ethical approval has been obtained, where applicable.

In the past, programming language are procedural, the design concept is based on the module and scope which are difficult to manage, but nowadays, the programming trend is Object-Oriented Programming (OOP), where objects are the key elements to build up application and the communications between different objects are through method invocation. A novel object-oriented processor offers an opportunity to enhance the system security, performance and provides a more effective way to manipulate OOP instead of using a software Virtual Machine. jHISC is a novel object-oriented processor which provides a natural way to map the concept of OOP into architectural level through the hardware object data structure. Our solution is to design secure hardware object data structures on a novel processor with Just-In-Time compilation for Java which then makes it possible to implement complex OO related bytecodes at hardware level and access some fields of object in parallel to improve the execution speed. It mainly targets J2ME and implements about 93% bytecodes and 83% OO related bytecodes in hardware directly.

Events and Sightings David Walden (bio) and Dag Spicer (bio) Fifty-Year Anniversaries in Norwegian Computing History Two fifty-year anniversaries in computing history were celebrated in Oslo in September 2017: the fifty-year anniversary of the creation of the Simula programming language, and the fifty-year anniversary of the founding of the Norsk Data computer company. Simula The Simula 67 programming language, first formally defined in 1967, was a step in a series of developments by Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard that began in the early 1960s.1 Dahl and Nygaard were given the 2001 IEEE John von Neumann Medal and the ACM 2001 A.M. Turing Award for their creation of Simula. A fifty-year anniversary celebration for Simula took place (in the “Simula Auditorium” in the “Ole-Johan Dahl Building”) at the University of Oslo on 27 September 2017. The celebration began with unveiling of a plaque from the IEEE History Committee’s Milestone program. The plaque reads: IEEE Milestone Object-oriented Programming, 1961–1967 Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard created the Simula programming languages in the 1960s at the Norwegian Computer Center, and in so doing introduced a new way of modeling and simulating complex tasks. Object-oriented programming is now dominant in systems development. It is an integral part of computer science curricula, as are languages built on object-oriented programming concepts, such as Smalltalk, C++, Java, and Python. September 2017 The nomination of this Milestone was from the IEEE Norway Section. The photo shows Section Vice-Chairman Kaveh Niayesh unveiling the plaque. The rest of the day consisted of presentations by several programming language researchers and developers: Oscar Nierstrasz (“Great Moments in the History of OOP”), Dave Thomas (“The Legacy of Simula 67”), and James Gosling (“Simula: A Personal Journey”), as well as a panel discussion chaired by Eric Jul (“Whither Programming Languages? Can We Still Celebrate Simula 50 Years from Now?”) with participation of the prior three speakers and Ole Lehrmann Madsen and Olaf Owe.2 Videos from the event are available.3 The previous afternoon, the Association of Simula Users (ASU) held a several-hour meeting at which there were six presentations and a wrap-up session. According to Boris Magnusson (ASU chairman 1982–83), the ASU has been in continuous existence since the early days of Simula 67, holding annual conferences and publishing a quarterly newsletter. However, in recent years the ASU activities “have slowly faded away, and the meeting in Oslo was intended as a last meeting and also a way to formally close down the Association.” Click for larger view View full resolution Photo 1. Photo credit: Harald Brombach/digi.no. Norsk Data On 16–17 September 2017, the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Norsk Data was marked. In 1967 Lars Monrad-Krohn, Per Bjørge, and Rolf Skår left the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (NDRE), where they had worked on the computer developments in “Siffergruppen” (the Digital Group), initiated and [End Page 93] led by Yngvar Lundh. They founded Norsk Data Elektronikk, where their first computer development was the Nord-1, building on work they had done in the Digital Group. Click for larger view View full resolution Photo 2. Veslemøy Østrem of Aftenposten interviewing Norsk Data founders Rolf Skår and Lars Monrad-Krohn. Photo credit: Ragnar Sturzel. The Nord-1was a minicomputer and competed well in Europe with minicomputers from the United States. With additional computers being developed over the years (arguably better hardware and software than some US competitors) and many high-profile or operation-critical installations, Norsk Data eventually became a high-flying company listed on the London as well as the NASDAQ stock exchanges, in addition to on the Norwegian exchange. With the personal computer revolution, Norsk Data went the way of almost all minicomputer manufacturers, eventually going out of business. For many of the eventual 4,500 employees of Norsk Data, their time with a company was one of the most exciting times of their professional careers, and the one-time employees of Norsk Data went on to populate a significant part of the developing Norwegian computing industry. The day of 18 September involved a five-hour...

Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm that emphasizes the use of objects and classes to build modular and maintainable software. One of the fundamental concepts in OOP is polymorphism, which is the ability of objects from different classes to respond to the same method in different ways. This study aims to analyze the effectiveness of the polymorphism concept in directing software design in terms of code structure, development utility, and maintenance efficiency. The research method used is a literature study and program code simulation using a procedural approach compared to an object-oriented approach that applies runtime polymorphism. The results of the analysis show that the use of polymorphism can significantly reduce the number of lines of code, logical structure traffic, and facilitate feature expansion without the need to change existing code. Thus, polymorphism has proven effective in improving readability, reusability, and scalability of software design.