Engaging students through mobile game development

Abstract

This paper describes using mobile game development as a motivational tool to engage students early in the curriculum. Mobile devices have become an integral part of everyday lives of modern students; using these devices as a part of the coursework may help them see the immediate connections between Computer Science and real-world technology. Compared to traditional game development, programming mobile games is less complex, which enables students with limited programming experience to create playable mobile games within the scope of a single course. Experience presented in this paper may be easily duplicated, but it may be especially useful in the first college-level course for students with CS AP credits.