Fun and games: a new software engineering course

ABSTRACT

Computer and video games have grown to be a major industry but, until recently, have largely been ignored by academia. The last couple of years, however, have seen the emergence of new academic programs, conferences, and journals dedicated to games studies. For the past three years we have used computer games as projects in our introductory software engineering course. Small teams of students build three games across the semester. In this paper we describe the course and discuss its success.

REFERENCES

• 1: The Joint Task Force on Computing Curricula, IEEE Computer Society, Association for Computing Machinery, Software Engineering 2004, Curriculum Guidelines for Undergraduate Degree Programs in Software Engineering.
• 2: IEEE Computer Society and ACM, Computing Curricula 2001, <http://www.computer.org/education/cc2001>.
• 3: Rudy Rucker, POP <http://www.rudyrucker.com/computergames/>.

INDEX TERMS

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

Additional Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.3 COMPUTERS AND EDUCATION
      K.3.2 Computer and Information Science Education
          Subjects: Curriculum

Keywords:
computer games, education, software engineering, video games