Designing Workshops to Bridge Visual and Textual Programming: A Narrative Game Approach

This work-in-progress paper addresses the transition gap between visual, text-based, and complex programming skills in early computer science education. We present a multi-level workshop concept designed to provide a coherent and motivating learning progression across different programming stages. The workshops integrate narrative-driven gameplay with progressively challenging programming tasks in a custom-developed 2D dungeon crawler framework, aiming to support learners in progressing from block-based coding to text-based and open code manipulation. The concept was implemented in collaboration with regional schools and industry partners and evaluated in six workshops with 92 participants. Initial results from pre- and post-surveys indicate high acceptance and a positive trend in programming interest, particularly among female students.