[Year 12 SofDev] Gamemaker

Tue Sep 11 17:04:43 EST 2007

hi david,

Before we work out the solution perhaps the first question should be:
Why are enrollments declining in computing courses?

I teach in a different type of school to you (Woodville High in South
Australia, a huge range of abilities and multicultural background) but
maybe my experience has some relevance

I've offered game maker based computer courses in senior school thinking
that the "motivation factor" would increase my class sizes. It didn't. I
didn't want to publicise this I suppose but when I did finally get around to
telling some other IT teachers no one was surprised - they all said our
enrollments are declining too

I'm still very keen in using computers in creative / constructionist manner
but now think I'll have to go back to more middle school involvement to
achieve that - but more than that it would require some sort of whole school
change in the way computers are conceptualised, a sort of VELS with steroids
perhaps

We have the world's greatest machine but no idea about how to use it in
School. It's a  bit like what Murray Gell-Mann said about School -
"invitation to a banquet and then being fed the menu"

However, I digress, to return to the topic ...

When students choose courses in senior school they are thinking:
* vocational futures - desire for either interesting job or lots of money
* uni entrance requirements - leading to ditto
* can I do it, its good if its not too hard - the doable factor

Perhaps surprisingly, these days, all of these factors tend to work against
computer courses to one degree or another -

Since the dot com crash the general perception is that although you might
get a job from computing its not going to be particularly high paid or
interesting. Of course if you are very brilliant you might end up making a
million from game design or whatever but that's not going to fill a class

Uni entrance - there are too  many stakeholders pushing their own barrows at
senior level - the advice students will get is do maths and science and if
you really want to be a programmer leave that to uni, they know how to do it
properly .... (finish sentence for yourself)

Doable - the reputation of programming is that it is difficult and many
courses are also "dry" (eg. RDB). Making the switch here to game making
helps a bit but it's also possibly lifting the "hardness" factor because
everyone knows that real programming is harder than say, RDB. So maybe the
dry factor and fun factor cancel out for this one

Mark Guzdial (tertiary college, Georgia Tech, USA) has an analysis on his
blog which goes:

1) The main reason for declining enrollments are economic, the dot com
crash. Students are prepared to put up with a lot if they are going to make
a lot of $$ at the end of the road. But computer science is now tarnished
with respect to that.

This little stat is interesting - "more high school students now take the
Latin AP exam than the Computer Science AP exam" :-)

2) The secondary reason is that computing courses are seen as boring but
hard. ie. computing is seen as a dry data processing  sort of thing (boring)
and the programming side of that is seen as hard. From Mark's perspective
and mine things can be done at this level but remember this is the secondary
reason, not the primary

Mark sees the declining enrollment crisis as an opportunity for curriculum
reform and they are developing new courses at Georgia Tech along those
lines. I wrote a blog recently containing lots of links to mark's blog
including links to how they are redesigning their courses. I think the
important point here is that they are looking at major integrated course
redesign not just adding something that is "fun" to what is already there.
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2007/08/mark-guzdial-on-computing-education.html

If you are still reading, this is getting long, and interested I'll post in
some more URLs below about enrollment decline,  the first three from Mark
but also one that I wrote a while back

The Wonderful opportunities of the declining enrollment crisis
http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/post/PLNK2CTH0WX2V9LYK

Software engineering and the cause of the declining enrollment crisis (part
1)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/post/PLNKUURHQRKBJYSU

Software engineering and the cause of the declining enrollment crisis (part
2)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/post/PLNK3P84TON4BKGND

Declining enrollments in IT courses
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2006/11/declining-enrolments-in-it-courses.html

-- 
Bill Kerr
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/
http://www.users.on.net/~billkerr/
skype: billkerr2006

On 9/11/07, David Dawson <David.Dawson at wesleycollege.net> wrote:
>
> The VITTA Gamemaker sessions actually begs the question:
> Should Gamemaker or other gaming software now be introduced into the yr
> 12 ITS course.
> I have previously not been that keen - however, progmatically. with
> falling enrolments - perhaps the students are voting with their feet and
> would pick up this subject if it was seen as more *fun*.
> What do others think?
> What chance the VCAA would accept new languages for next year?
> David Dawson
> Association Inc
>
> David Dawson
> Head of Information Technology
> Head of Learning Technologies
> St.Kilda Rd Campus
> Wesley College, Melbourne
> Wk 8102 6340
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