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Gram's House: A Game For Girls and Computer Science

Gram's House is a game designed to encourage middle school girls to see computer science in a new, positive light as well as learn real computer science skills through story and puzzle-based gameplay.

The Concept

Computer science is still a gender-imbalanced field. Outreach efforts in the form of classroom visits, summer camps, and more appear to be helping. Inspired by this, we are designing Gram’s House to reach an even larger audience of middle school girls than is possible in person.

In our vision, what is needed to solve the problems of under-representation and lack of CS interest comes one step before engaging with programming: to let students understand what CS is about and what its relevance is to our society. This requires a focus on high-level principles in CS, including algorithmic thinking, rather than the low-level programming existing technologies focus on.  This coupled with a known preference for puzzle games among our target audience is why we chose to focus on puzzle games.  Showing the player how computer science can be used to make a social difference through our story is also key.

Preliminary Research Questions

  • Changing Perceptions

    • Will playing a fully featured video game positively change the perception that middle school girls have of the field of computer science?

    • Will the players see the opportunity for making real social impact with computer science after playing the game?

    • Will players be willing to share their experiences (what they like about the game, what they have learned) through social media, such as Facebook?

  • Learning Computer Science

    • Will the players learn real computer science concepts through the puzzle mini-games?

    • How does the use of story affect learning outcomes?

    • Will players pursue further understanding of computer science concepts, particularly if we provide them with content appropriate to their age?

  • Creating Effective Puzzles

    • How can we procedurally generate our puzzles so that they remain fresh to the player no matter how many times they play?

    • How can we ensure procedurally generated puzzles have a difficulty level that is appropriate for when the player encounters them?

    • How can we design procedurally generated puzzles to ensure effective transfer of knowledge?

Core Project Team

A team of researchers in the United States and Canada works on the Gram's House project:

NSF AISL Pathways Grants for Story and PCG (2014-2016)

As of August 2014, we have two NSF Pathways grants from the Advancing Informal STEM Learning program.

The first, "The Role of Story in Games to Teach Computer Science Concepts to Middle School Girls", is co-lead by Elisabeth Gee and Carolee Stewart-Gardiner, with Gail Carmichael as a contractor.  This project will compare the use of stories, contexts, and no story elements at all within the context of analog educational games teaching computer science concepts.

The second, "GrACE: A Procedurally Generated Puzzle Game to Stimulate Mindful and Collaborative Informal Learning to Transform Computer Science Education", is co-lead by Gillian Smith and Casper Harteveld.  This project will investigate the use of procedurally generated content in educational puzzle games teaching computer science concepts.

More information about both projects is available on our website.

Pilot Project (2012)

A pilot project lead by Carolee Stewart at Kean University was funded for Summer - Fall 2012. The research team developed a new set of mini-games using Game Maker, to be compared with the previously developed game prototype described below.  Both versions were tested with middle school students to see how effective the game concept is at putting CS in a positive light and teaching CS skills.  The study showed that girls both improved their perception of computer science and increased their skills after playing the games, and that they particularly enjoyed being able to customize the Game Maker version to their own liking.

Early Prototype Game (2010-2011)

I and three other team members (Jacob Agar, Jamie Madill, and Matthew Shelley) originally designed Gram's House together.

Download the demo program (zipped) and play the demo version of the game for yourself (Windows only).  You may need to download and install the XNA Framework and .NET Framework.

Demo Resources

Original artwork by Jonathan Demers and Nicole Will, used with permission.
Original background music by Shannon Cressman, used with permission.

Royalty-free sound effects from Flash Kit, and Hollywood Sound Effect.
http://www.flashkit.com/
http://www.dewa.com/sound/

Personal (non-commercial) sound effects from The Recordist.
http://www.therecordist.com/free-sfx/

 

Related Publications

Gee, E. Tran, K. Stewart, C. Carmichael, G., Hopping, L. The role of story in computer science games for girls.  Proceedings of the Games, Learning and Society Conference 11, 2015.

Stewart-Gardiner, C., Carmichael, G., Gee, E., Hopping, L. Girls Learning Computer Science Principles with After School Games.  GenderIT, 2015.

Harteveld, C., Smith, G.S., Carmichael, G., Gee, E., & Stewart, C.  A Design-Focused Analysis of Games Teaching Computer Science. In Proceedings of Games, Learning and Society Conference 10, 2014. [pdf]

Stewart-Gardiner, C., Carmichael, G., Latham, J., Lozano, N., Greene, J. Influencing Middle School Girls to Study Computer Science Through Educational Computer Games.  In Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges, 2013.

Related Presentations

Carmichael, G., Gee, E., Smith, G., Stewart-Gardiner, C. New Perspectives on Gender-Inclusive Game Design. Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, 2014. (panel, names alphabetical)

Carmichael, G., Stewart-Gardiner, C. Gram's House: Encouraging Girls to Consider Computer Science Through Games.  Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, 2013.  [abstract] [poster]