Work in progress: Teaching game design and robotics together: A natural marriage of computing and engineering design in a first-year engineering course

Abstract

The increased dependence on computer programming in engineering has made it essential for engineering students to learn about programming throughout their undergraduate education. In the same vein, computing students benefit when given an opportunity to learn more about engineering design and systematic thinking. This paper discusses how one college embedded computing and engineering into a combined first-year introductory course. The course fuses computing and engineering using game design and robotics as an offering for both cohorts of students to work together in a multidisciplinary environment. Over the course of the semester, students learn introductory computing and engineering design concepts by designing games and robots using informatics tools to solve design challenges. Interdisciplinary teams consisting of computing and engineering students work together to prototype a game design idea and then bring that idea to life using robots as part of their final project.