BlockNKey: A Game for Teaching Systematic Hypothesis Testing
Shravani Agrawal, Indu Rallabhandi, Sruti Srinivasa Ragavan · 2025
Hypothesis formation and testing is central to debugging computer programs or algorithms, and thus considered an essential element of computational thinking (CT) education. To teach this skill to school children, we developed a two-player rule-guessing game called Block-N-Key which involves hypothesis generation and testing to categorise given blocks according to one of many possible rules. In an evaluation of the game with 10 children aged 8-12, participants were able to systematically generate and test hypotheses, indicating the potential usefulness and usability of the game in classroom settings. However, students needed guided instruction on: 1) the generation of complex hypotheses (e.g., using Boolean operations), 2) the use of falsification-not just confirmation-to test hypotheses, and 3) systematicity in keeping track of prior hypotheses and evidence to support limited working memory.