Developing Game-Like Instructional Modules to Enhance Student Learning in Lower Level Core Computer Science Courses Jinghua Zhang
[email protected] Phone: 336-750-3324
Mustafa Atay
[email protected]
Rebecca Caldwell
[email protected]
Elva J. Jones
[email protected]
Department of Computer Science, Winston-Salem State University, Winston-Salem, NC 27110
ABSTRACT Struggling with the lower level core Computer Science (CS) courses is the main barrier preventing students from declaring the CS major and retaining students in the program. In this poster, we present our project of developing game-like instructional modules to enhance student learning in those gatekeeper courses namely Computer Programming I, Computer Programming II and Data Structures. Several modules have been developed and evaluated in the computer programming courses at Winston-Salem State University (WSSU). Initial assessment results show that game-like instructional modules had a positive impact on student learning.
Significance and Relevance of the Topic Statistics have shown that fewer African Americans are pursuing CS degrees relative to their proportion of the overall population [1] and among those who do major in CS very few are employed as programmers [2]. Many minority students have fears of programming, which is one of the major contributing factors for the above troubling situation. Recently, there has been increasing demand for programmers who can develop applications for mobile devices generated by the emerging mobile computing technologies. This is a great opportunity for minority computer scientists to influence the computing industry by developing apps that are targeted to not only African American populations but also the general public. Many novel approaches have been proposed to increase CS enrollment and student retention [35]. Incorporating games in the computing field is one of the most remarkable approaches and has a record of success, especially in using games to teach introductory courses (CS1/CS2) [4,5,6]. The Games doubled the incoming undergraduate enrollment in the Department of Computer Science at University of Southern California (USC) [7] and will broaden participation in CS and create an immense impact on student learning [8]. Our project aims to help WSSU, an HBCU, to enhance CS education, attract new minority and female students to pursue the CS major, and eventually help the enrollment and retention of underrepresented students and increase the pool of qualified minority graduates in this field. The project involves implementing three components: Education, Assessment and Dissemination. The Education Component includes developing game-like instructional modules for lower level core CS courses. These course modules will allow Students to learn the difficult concepts in a gaming context. The Assessment Component includes establishing an advisory board for the project and implementing the evaluation plan. The Advisory Board, which consists of experienced CS faculty, education faculty and professionals from the game industry, will assist in project development and the evaluation process. Faculty and students will be involved in the 1
evaluation process as well. The Dissemination component includes developing a website for the project and organizing a faculty workshop for HBCUs. The workshop will allow us to share the modules developed, project results and lessons learned with other HBCUs. The anticipated outcomes of the project are as follows: • Transform the way the lower level core CS courses are taught and the way students learn. • Improve students’ scores on the tests for the targeted topics. • Attract more talented minorities and women into the computing field. • Have a positive impact on retention rate in Computer Science program. • Produce stronger minority graduates in the STEM field for the future workforce. The educational component will cultivate students’ ability in the computing field, in a minority serving institution environment, while expanding their educational knowledge. The successful completion of this project will advance research and the knowledge in transforming the way these core CS courses are taught and more specifically the way students learn at WSSU and other minority institutions. The proposed activities will address the problem experienced in many universities which is students’ inability to program or fear of programming, specifically students at HBCUs and potentially increase diversity in the computing industry while developing an educational process through practical experience. The project will have a significant impact on underrepresented students in the computer education.
Content The poster will present an overview of this three-year project. Several game modules that have been developed and evaluated in the computer programming courses will be presented in detail. Assessment methods and initial results will be included for sharing and discussion.
References [1] NSF S&E Indicators 2010 http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind10/c2/c2s2.htm#s4 [2] Bureau of Labor Statistics, Household Data Annual Averages: Employed persons by detailed occupation, sex, race and Hispanic or Latino ethnicity, http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.pdf [date accessed April 5, 2011]. [3] S. Yang, T. Breedlove, R. Carestia, Teaching introductory classes using LEGO robotics, Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges, Vol. 19, Issue 2, pg 113-114, 2003. [4] J. D. Bayliss, Using games in introductory courses: tips from the trenches, Proceedings of the 40th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education (SIGCSE’09), March 04-07, 2009, Chattanooga, TN, USA [5] S. Leutenegger, J. Edgington, A Games First Approach to Teaching Introductory Programming. In Proceedings of the 38th SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE’ 07), Covington, Kentucky, March, 2007. [6] Michael Eagle, Tiffany Barnes, Wu's castle: teaching arrays and loops in a game, Proceedings of the 13th annual conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education, June 30-July 02, 2008, Madrid, Spain [doi>10.1145/1384271.1384337] [7] M. Zyda , V. Lacour , C. Swain, Operating a computer science game degree program, Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on Game development in computer science education, p.71-75, February 27-March 03, 2008, Miami, Florida. [8] A. Repenning, A. loannidou, Broadening participation through scalable game design, ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, v.40 n.1, March 2008 2
