On games, patterns, and design
Paul V. Gestwicki, Fu-Shing Sun · 2007
With unsteady enrollments in computer science programs nationwide, it is important to find new ways to increase student interest and retention. Undergraduates exhibit an almost universal interest in interactive electronic entertainment. The use of interactive environments such as Alice have proven their pedagogic usefulness for teaching programming concepts [4], and game-related assignments are a staple of the SIGCSE "Nifty Assignments" panel. These results have inspired our research on the teaching of design patterns through game programming courses [3]. As we hoped and expected, with the direct intervention of professors, students' software design skills improved through these experimental courses. However, we also made an unanticipated observation: students' game designs improved as well, separately from the software design. There was little or no direct influence by the professors over the game designs, and so we have developed further experiments to measure this correlation between game and software design.