Scalable game design and the development of a checklist for getting computational thinking into public schools

Abstract

Game design appears to be a promising approach to interest K-12 students in Computer Science. Unfortunately, balancing motivational and educational concerns is truly challenging. Over a number of years, we have explored how to achieve a functional balance by creating a curriculum that combines increasingly complex game designs, computational thinking patterns and authoring tools. Scalable Game Design is a research project exploring new strategies of how to scale up from after school and summer programs into required curriculum of public schools through game design approaches. The project includes inner city schools, remote rural areas and Native American communities. A requirement checklist of computational thinking tools regarding curriculum, teacher training, standards and authoring tools has been developed and is being tested with thousands of students.