This project involves a redesign of the software engineering course. The objective is to use games, while appealing to women as well as men. The course focuses on games as outreach. In particular, collaboration is planned with a secondary school in southern Tanzania, Africa to develop educational games.
Intellectual Merit: This project contributes to pedagogical research on ways to attract and retain women in Computer Science. It explores how games in the computing curriculum can serve to disrupt rather than reinforce gender stereotypes. And it provides an approach to teaching software design that makes explicit the ways in which software is a cultural artifact, one that reflects and reinforces social norms, and encourages students to understand the implications of their designs.
Broader Impact: The explosion of games and game building in the computer science curriculum may work in opposition to efforts to recruit and retain women. It is crucial to understand if and how this opposition works and to discover remedies. This work informs a broad range of institutions that have gaming programs. It also serves to attract women to careers in game design. And it helps train game designers who are able to serve a wider audience.
