Experience with an industry-driven capstone course on game programming: extended abstract

ABSTRACT

Game programming classes have been offered at the University of North Texas continuously since 1993. The classes are project based, and feature collaborative coursework with art majors in UNT's School of Visual Arts. We discuss the design that enables them to simultaneously provide both training for students intending employment in the game industry, and a capstone experience for general computer science undergraduates.

REFERENCES

• 1: Joel C. Adams, Chance-It: an object-oriented capstone project for CS-1, Proceedings of the twenty-ninth SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education, p.10-14, February 26-March 01, 1998, Atlanta, Georgia, United States
• 2: Carl Alphonce , Phil Ventura, Object orientation in CS1-CS2 by design, Proceedings of the 7th annual conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education, June 24-28, 2002, Aarhus, Denmark
• 3: Katrin Becker, Teaching with games: the Minesweeper and Asteroids experience, Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges, v.17 n.2, p.23-33, December 2001
• 4: Computing Curricula 2001: Computer Science. Steelman draft, The Joint Task Force on Computing Curricula, IEEE Computer Society, ACM, 2001.
• 5: Nils Faltin, Designing courseware on algorithms for active learning with virtual board games, Proceedings of the 4th annual SIGCSE/SIGCUE ITiCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education, p.135-138, June 27-30, 1999, Cracow, Poland
• 6: Todd J. Feldman , Julie D. Zelenski, The quest for excellence in designing CS1/CS2 assignments, Proceedings of the twenty-seventh SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education, p.319-323, February 15-17, 1996, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
• 7: IGDA Curriculum Framework. Report Version 2.3 Beta, International Game Developer's Association, 2003.
• 8: Randolph M. Jones, Design and implementation of computer games: a capstone course for undergraduate computer science education, Proceedings of the thirty-first SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education, p.260-264, March 07-12, 2000, Austin, Texas, United States
• 9: M. Mencher. Get in the Game! New Riders Publishing, 2003.
• 10: Robert Moser, A fantasy adventure game as a learning environment: why learning to program is so difficult and what can be done about it, Proceedings of the 2nd conference on Integrating technology into computer science education, p.114-116, June 01-05, 1997, Uppsala, Sweden
• 11: Ian Parberry, Learn Computer Game Programming with Directx 7.0, Wordware Publishing Inc., Plano, TX, 2000
• 12: Ian Parberry, Introduction to Computer Game Programming with Direct X 8.0 with Cdrom, Wordware Publishing Inc., Plano, TX, 2001
• 13: Guttorm Sindre , Steinar Line , Ottar V. Valvåg, Positive experiences with an open project assignment in an introductory programming course, Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Software Engineering, May 03-10, 2003, Portland, Oregon

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.3 COMPUTERS AND EDUCATION
      K.3.2 Computer and Information Science Education
          Subjects: Computer science education

General Terms:
Design, Experimentation, Measurement

Keywords:
capstone, game programming, undergraduate education