Gaming After School: Boys and Girls Clubs of America Game Design Curriculum

James Diamond · Colleen Macklin · John Sharp

Thu., June 11, 11:00–12:30, Browsing Library (2nd floor, West Central)

PETLab, a collaboration between Parsons the New School for Design and Games for Change, is developing a game design curriculum for the Boys and Girls Clubs of America (BGCA). In March 2009, we will begin a four-week pilot project in five BGCA clubhouses nationwide in order to conduct formative research on the curriculum design, pedagogical practices of the clubhouse facilitators, and materials that accompany the program. Partnering with the Center for Children and Technology of the Education Development Center, we will observe boys and girls as they engage in game design activities and investigate any changes in their understanding of the principles of game design.

The BGCA Game Design Curriculum is a modular program utilizing principles of active learning through the play and creation of games. Boys and Girls Clubs around the country have their own cultures, community context, and socioeconomic situations. To create a program that can fit their individual cultures, we have created a modular curriculum that can be run with or without computers, in different contexts. The curriculum models the iterative design process — play, design, playtest, and iterate — and covers game basics, puzzles, narrative in games, and games and social issues.

The curriculum includes digital (Gamestar Mechanic and Scratch) and non–digital materials and activities in order to introduce boys and girls to the fundamental principles of game design, as well as to familiarize them with the possibility of using games to introduce players to social justice–related issues. Working in teams, children will create an original game that addresses an issue affecting their local community during the program’s culminating activity. The boys and girls will need to consider how their games’ rules, mechanics, and play spaces relate to and illustrate their issue.

Our evaluation of the pilot project will focus on the following areas:

• Changes in boys’ and girls’ understanding of the role of rules, goals, play space, story, and mechanics in games and game play as expressed through their design journals, the games they create, and pre/post assessments.
• Changes in boys’ and girls’ understanding of the skills that relate to game design and development, as expressed in an open–ended pre/post assessment.
• The development of children’s game design skills in Scratch and Gamestar Mechanic.
• The game designer’s role in the curriculum implementation within the context of the clubhouses (designers will accompany instructors in two of the five clubhouses).

During our presentation, we will discuss our pedagogical approach, the curriculum, and assessment results from the pilot tests. We also hope to engage the audience in a discussion about game design programs in informal learning spaces. We are particularly interested in receiving feedback on the curriculum from other game design educators.