Engaging students through mobile game development

This paper describes using mobile game development as a motivational tool to engage students early in the curriculum. Mobile devices have become an integral part of everyday lives of modern students; using these devices as a part of the coursework may help them see the immediate connections between Computer Science and real-world technology. Compared to traditional game development, programming mobile games is less complex, which enables students with limited programming experience to create playable mobile games within the scope of a single course. Experience presented in this paper may be easily duplicated, but it may be especially useful in the first college-level course for students with CS AP credits. Categories and Subject Descriptors K.3.2 [Computers and Education]: Computers and Information Science Education ? Curriculum; K.8.0 [Personal Computing]: General ? Games General Terms Design, Experimentation, Human Factors Keywords Mobile game development, curriculum, motivation.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: SIGCSE
• Authors: Stan Kurkovsky
• Keywords: Education, Mobile Game Development, Playable Mobile Games, Programming Mobile Games, SIGCSE 2009