Perception of Parents towards Fun Puzzle Games in Helping Mild Autistic Children Improve Their Computational Thinking Skills

Abstract

The COVID- 19 pandemic has caused much stress. Autistic children and their parents/guardians are not exempted. The question is how to engage the autistic children virtually. There are many online games, which can address this problem and they are very exemplary. In our small study, we aim to balance education and fun, so that learning is not too serious. We also aim to improve autistic children’s computational thinking skills and enable asset/content reuse. We have reduced the degree of structure, with familiarity in contexts as affordance in four minigames: categorizing puzzle, matching -sorting puzzle, pi cture puzzle and outdoor puzzle . Through computational practice, we hope that children will be able to recognize patterns , improve concepts and perspectives, and perform better. We also hope to encourage asset reuse via algorithmic changes. Findings are en couraging, indicating that parents/guardians are positive towards the games’ usefulness and ease of use . Of special note is their preference for the learning of vocabulary and development of imagination , above matching and categorizing.