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Media Impact: Games in the Classroom: Using Games as a Motivator for Studying Computing: Part 1
April-June 2009 (vol. 16 no. 2)
pp. 4-8
Editor's Note
It's no secret that undergraduate computer science enrollment, which has suffered through one of its periodic downturns, seems to have bottomed out but is now on an upswing. This cyclic behavior has been occurring for many years now, producing many exciting ideas concerning how to revamp introductory computer science courses to make them more exciting and relevant, and to show beginning students that computer science entails more than just programming. Georgia Tech, one of the active participants in this revamp, has developed the concept of threads (a means to connect chunks of related knowledge across different courses) and is devising techniques to enrich beginning courses using minirobots and multimedia. The present article, written by Andrew Phelps and his group at the Rochester Institute of Technology, describes a parallel effort to use gaming as a way to improve learning and to demonstrate to students that computer science is indeed exciting and cool.
—William I. Grosky
[1] S. Zweben, "2006-2007 Taulbee Survey: Record Ph.D. Production Exceeds 1,700; Undergraduate Enrollment Trends Still Unclear," Computing Research News, vol. 20, no. 3, 2008.[2] B. Bloom et al., Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals: Cognitive Domain, Longman, 1956.[3] D. Krathwohl et al., Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals: Affective Domain, McKay, 1964.[4] J.G. Brooks and M.G. Brooks, In Search of Understanding: The Case for Constructivist Classrooms, Assoc. for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1999, p. 136.[5] V. Ramalingam et al., "Self-Efficacy and Mental Models in Learning to Program," Proc. 9th Ann. Conf. Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, ACM Press, 2004, pp. 171-175.[6] Joint Task Force on Computing Curricula, Computing Curricula Final Report: Computer Science, 2001; http://www.computer.org/portal/cms_docs_ieeecs/ ieeecs/education/cc2001 cc2001.pdf.[7] P. Ventura, On the Origins of Programmers: Identifying Predictors of Success for an Objects-First CS1, doctoral Dissertation, Computer Science and Engineering, University at Buffalo, SUNY, 2004.[8] K.B. Bruce, "Controversy on How to Teach CS 1: A Discussion on the SIGCSE-Members Mailing List," SIGCSE Bulletin, vol. 36, no. 4, 2004, pp. 29-34.[9] Proc. 3rd Int'l Conf. Game Development in Computer Science Education, ACM Press, 2008.[10] R. Pattis, Karel the Robot: A Gentle Introduction to the Art of Programming with Pascal, John Wiley and Sons, 1981.[11] S. Cooper et al., "Teaching Objects-First in Introductory Computer Science," Proc. 34th SIGCSE Technical Symp. Computer Science Education, ACM Press, 2003, pp. 191-195.[12] M. Flanagan et al., "Values at Play: Design Tradeoffs in Socially-Oriented Game Design," Proc. SIGCHI Conf. Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM Press, 2005, pp. 751-760.
Index Terms:
games education, introductory computing, first-year computing, interactive media, game development, Media Impact, multimedia and graphics
Citation:
Andrew M. Phelps, Christopher A. Egert, Jessica D. Bayliss, "Media Impact: Games in the Classroom: Using Games as a Motivator for Studying Computing: Part 1," IEEE MultiMedia, vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 4-8, Apr.-June 2009, doi:10.1109/MMUL.2009.40
