by Kyle Keane ¹, Andrew Ringler ¹, Abhinav Gandhi, Mark Vrablic

• ¹ Massachusetts Institute of Technology

This is a 9-day hands-on workshop about designing, building, and publishing simple educational videogames.

Course Description

This is a 9-day hands-on workshop about designing, building, and publishing simple educational videogames. No previous experience with computer programming or videogame design is required, beginning students will be taught everything they need to know and advanced students will be challenged to learn new skills. Participants will work in small teams to design, build, and publish their own videogames that will be shared in a large public exhibition.

Team projects are completely open-ended and designed by participants, example projects include: A collection of bouncing balls that can be sped up or slowed down using hand gestures, a virtual reality laboratory where kids can perform experiments, an internet-enabled puzzle that multiple players can contribute to, and crowdsourcing interface for describing scientific graphics for blind students. Participants will complete one guided projects in order to learn the fundamentals and will then break into small teams to complete a one-day short project of their choosing.

After the short project, participants will break into new teams that will each have four days to design, plan, and build a custom project of their choice. On the last day of the course, students will present their projects in a public exhibition and have the chance to win a prize for "crowd favorite". Participants will learn about videogame creation using the Unity game engine, collaborative software development using GitHub, gesture handling using the Microsoft Kinect, 3D digital object creation, videogame design, and small team management.