Computer Game Design: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Addressing Underrepresentation in Computing

这个促进教育跨学科研究（FIRE）项目针对的是一个复杂的STEM教育问题，这个问题对全国具有重要意义，即缺乏女孩和少数民族选择学习高级计算。我们的目标是通过让参与者参与计算思维（CT）来帮助改变现状，帮助他们不仅成为用户，而且成为技术的生产者。 这个跨学科的团队将来自非营利组织的发展心理学家与教育研究人员，计算机科学家和加州大学圣克鲁斯分校（UCSC）的研究生配对，与当地四所学校的140名中学女生和少数民族一起开发，测试和研究计算机游戏创作工具。UCSC计算机科学副教授，拥有改造游戏设计的专业知识，以及指导计算机科学领域的女性，通过一对一的课程，结构化的专业发展和研究来指导PI。 通过这种跨学科的方法，PI将通过计算机科学的五个本科和研究生课程进行专业发展，并与其他团队成员和行业分支机构进行互动，以了解计算媒体，游戏和交互式讲故事，软件工程，语言和手势的计算建模，数字艺术和动画。在这个沉浸式的环境中，PI还将进行研究，以获得跨越社会科学，教育和计算机科学之间学科界限的技能和知识，并分享儿童发展，社会科学和教育研究方法的专业知识。五阶段研究研究以CT为框架，开发，测试和完善游戏创作工具。在这些阶段，定性和定量方法将捕获和分析研究数据，以揭示女孩和少数民族喜欢创建什么样的电脑游戏，以及游戏创作是否构建计算思维。本研究将探讨以下研究问题：（1）如何加强或创造新的游戏创作工具，真正吸引中学生的计算思维？(2)对于女孩和少数民族来说，一个允许学生创建角色、叙事和动态关系的游戏创作工具比一个没有这些功能的工具更吸引人吗？

This Fostering Interdisciplinary Research on Education (FIRE) project targets a complex STEM education issue of national significance regarding the lack of girls and minorities choosing to study advanced computing. The goal is to help change the current status by engaging participants in computational thinking (CT) to help prepare them to not just be users, but producers of technology. The focus is on computer game programming/game authoring.This interdisciplinary team pairs a developmental psychologist from a non-profit organization with educational researchers, computer scientists, and graduate students from the University of California-Santa Cruz (UCSC) to develop, test, and study computer game authoring tools with 140 middle school girls and minorities in four local schools. A UCSC associate professor of computer science with expertise in transforming game design, as well as mentoring women in computer science, mentors the PI through one-on-one sessions, structured professional development, and research. Through this interdisciplinary approach, the PI will pursue professional development through five undergraduate and graduate courses in computer science and interact with other team members and industry affiliates to learn about computational media, gaming and interactive storytelling, software engineering, computational modeling of language and gestures, digital arts, and animation. Within this immersive environment, the PI also will conduct research to acquire skills and knowledge that crosses disciplinary boundaries between social science, education, and computer science and share expertise in child development, social science, and educational research methodologies.The five-phase research study uses CT as the framework to develop, test, and refine the game authoring tools. During these phases, qualitative and quantitative methods will capture and analyze research data to reveal what kinds of computer games girls and minorities like to create and whether game authoring builds computational thinking. The following research questions will be investigated:(1) How can we strengthen or create new game authoring tools that truly engage middle school students in computational thinking?(2) Is a game authoring tool that allows students to create character, narrative, and dynamic relationships more engaging for girls and minorities than a tool without these features?