Girls, Computer Science, and Games AND From Computer Games to a Career in IT
From Anita Borg Institute Wiki
Girls, Computer Science, and Games
Presenter: Gail Carmichael (Carleton University)
Because of their popularity with today's younger generation, video games are a great way to capture the attention of middle and high school aged students. This presentation will describe a week long mini-course that took advantage of this fact to teach computer science skills to grade eight and nine girls, who, at the end of the course, were able to create their own video games.
(The second session, From Computer Games to a Career in IT, was cancelled so the first session filled the hour instead.)
From Computer Games to a Career in IT This speaker was unable to attend
Presenter: Anne Marie Agnelli (CA)
Opportunities abound for women in the IT industry which spans from video gaming to software and hardware, as well as technical positions. Anne Marie Agnelli, vice president, communications and community relations for CA, Inc. will address how being exposed to technology through computer gaming can help girls and young women see the opportunities and benefits a career in IT can offer. Agnelli will also focus on how careers for females in the IT industry not only blend within the technical side of the business but also spill into areas such as marketing, communications, finance and legal. Session attendees will gain insight on the dynamic career paths that young women can attain within the world of IT.
Note Taker: Eshe N Pickett
Contents |
Girls, Computer Science and Games
How The Mini-Course Came to Be
Carelton University has an enrichment minicourse program in the Ottawa area. The courses each last for one week and are geared toward high acheiving high school students who have an opportunity to experience College life. Most of the students come from grade 8 (~13 yrs old). The courses meet 9am-3pm daily, and have access to University labs, projectors and lecture rooms. Virtual Ventures also focuses on science and technology.
When writing the course description for Girls and Gaming, Gail took a page from Randy Pausch giving the "head fake"; highlighting the learning about video games and having fun aspect of the camp, but the goal and focus is really teaching complex computer science principles. Sometimes young women can be intimidated by course descriptions that seemed overly technical.
Course Content
- Computer Science
- Explaining how Computer Science can fit whatever interests you have, and can be used to address many issues
- Social impact - heping others using Computer Science
- Women in Computer Science
- The numbers (ratio of men:women)
- Explaining how having women in technical fields provides a fresh new perspective, ex: mamogram machines would most likely have been designed much differently
- Game Design
- Thinking about game worlds
- What kind of game would the student like to make
- Writing a synopsis of the game
- Computer Science Topics
- Object Oriented Programming
- Usability
- Computer Grpahics
- Artificial Intelligence
- This is a favorite
- Finite state machines for tracking characters
Effective Content
When teaching younger students, it is very important to do more than stand and lecture. Make sure that you engage the girls on their level. Variety is key. Use group activities, multimedia, and fun exercises.
- Explanations
- Videos
- Think-Pair-Share
- Girls interacted with eachother surrounding a challenge question. Share with each other and summarize discussions to the class
- Group Discussion
- Be careful to make sure that everyone participates equally in discussion
- Computer Science Unplugged
- Exercises that teach computer concepts of Computer Science without the use of computers
- Lab Time
- Opportunity to work on games
- Many Univerisities have content available on YouTube
The software used for the course to design the games was Game Maker. Game Maker is a free version 2-d game making environment similar to Alice. Game Maker is all event driven, you set an action for buttons and the events that occur based on those actions. Younger students should use drag and drop functionality, advanced students can delve into coding.
Additional tools that you can use: Alice, Kodu, and Scratch.
Course Material
Post Mortem mini-course content Additional mini-course content
Questions
- Q: I am leading a group of men coding a video game and they have far more coding experience, and I'm the only girl, how do I assume my role?
- A: The enthusiasm is first and foremost, but you are there to implement a system, motivate them to keep things going. Making people realize the importance of the process, spend more time with your team the more time you spend w/them the more they grow to trust you. Take the time to delve into the code and learn it as well.
- Q: How did you find the girls to be in your course?
- A: The girls came to the course, as part of the larger program Carelton Mini-coures program, the publicizing happened by the university, I focused on making the course description accessible and interesting to the girls.
- A: Look at the ACM's dotdiva program
- A: Reach out to local school districts to get guidance and career counselors to advertise the program to students
- Q: How do you shorten the course to deliver in an abbreviated time period?
- A: The IBM EXITE and Virtual Ventures courses I delivered were more condensed version of the course, focused moreso on the Computer Science overview and Women in Computing.
- Q': How do I decide as an Undergrad if the game design major is for me?
- A: It's okay to switch majors, if you are unsure, try a few courses and make sure that you like it before you commit.
- Q: Do you have an idea about how your course impacted the girl's ideas on computer science?
- A: The draw for the girls was gaming, so exposing them to computer science, was an added positive. We had a series of survey questions that asked the girls about their interest before and after the program.
- Q: How do you ensure that the girls are not just having fun, but actually applying the computer science concepts?
- A: Some of the concepts are disconnected, the video game keeps them interested in computer science, for instance with state machine concepts, we talked about how Video Games might implement state.
- Q: Do you have any intentions to expand this to a summer program?
- A: There are a lot of ways that you could expand, but at this time, the venue and time constraints would not allow.
- Q: What kinds of games were made gameplay wise and theme wise?
- A: Many of the games are heavily influenced by the tutorials, so they take the tutorial game and modify it, but for example, they will modify the heroes, for instance making the woman save the man. One girl used an anime illustration, scanned it in and used Gimp to add color, so she worked longer on the art than the game design.
- Q: How do you address the issue of different exposure levels, some girls knowing a lot, some knowing only a little
- A: At our grade level, we deal with the concepts and since it is a short one week program targeted at high acheiving students, we haven't encountered that issue.
- Q: Is there a concept that women have more trouble with than men?
- A:Having not had a comparisson group of men/women, it is difficult for me to answer that question.
- Q: How do you encourage women to be more forward about asking questions?
- A: Encourage them to ask questions, no matter how "stupid" you might think the question may be. Try to strike a balance between too many questions. Women seem to be more comfortable with asking the "i don't know" question, while men seem to like asking the "challenge questions" where they think that the professor is wrong and want to prove it.
