Experience-Based Training in Computer Science Education via Online Multiplayer Games on Computational Thinking

During the pandemics, the need to switch to the online setting gave us the opportunity to involve a group of university students in the design and realization of an online coding challenge among middle school classes: the first edition of the Italian Coding League (ICL). The second edition of the ICL competition took place in March 2022 and involved 609 students from 29 classes from 9 Italian regions. In the paper we present the format adopted for the organization of the ICL competition (an online game realized on a multiplayer game platform - one class, one player) and then focus on the experiential learning process adopted for university students involved in the initiative. An assessment of the entire activity is also presented, using data collected during the competition: we decided to refer to a public and scientifically recognized framework to define the challenges to be included in the competition and this allowed us to have explicit metrics useful to identify the degree of skills and competences exercised by the players during the competition.