Project Objectives:
Our stated objectives for the grant are as follows:• Do something inherently good for an underserved population. That is, we are building games and apps for those with autism;• Offer socially relevant context for 100-level and 400-level courses that teach the design-build-test engineering cycle applied to the development of a product;• Potentially attract under-represented populations to engineering, because of the social relevance;• Have the possibility of commercial success, if a game or app becomes popular in the marketplace;• Build upon existing departmental strengths in computer game development.
Project Achievements:
Games/Apps Developed:• EECS481 Software Engineering acted as a ‘filter’ for game development on the Microsoft Kinect Platform. As such, there were:o ~Fifty (50) games proposed by individual students;o ~Ten (10) games developed by student groups during winter 2012 semester; Two (2) games developed by student groups of interns and independent study students to ‘commercial-grade’ during Spring/Summer 2012.• ENG100 Gaming for the Greater Good saw approx. fifteen (15) simple games developed in the Python programming language and deployed at UM Health Systems in the Physical and Assistive Technology Lab.Demographics:Typical enrollment of females for CS-centric courses is 10-15%. ENG100 has approx. 25% female enrollment for fall semester, 2012.Internships:The work-force for this project includes the following 7 person team.• 2 interns paid by UMHS (Connor and Patrick)• 2 interns paid by GW Stage 1 grant (Sharif and Devin)• 2 unpaid interns (Joey and Tianyi)• 1 independent study student (Jon)Please note that I currently applied for an additional 8 ‘interns’ through UM’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP). UROP will supply both an additional workforce of 8 persons and additional funding of $4000.In-kind Donations:The following generous donations were received from Microsoft Corporation:• 6 x Kinect Sensors;• 2 x xBox 360 Platforms;• MSDN License;• Multitudes of Kinect gamesIn addition, an (currently unofficial) donation from Apple for mobile app development includes ~$50K worth of development equipment, including MacBooks, iMacs, and iPads. This equipment is more broadly to be used as part of a ‘Mobile at Michigan’ initiative, but the efforts associated with this grant will also have equal access.Other Notice:The work associated with this grant has been widely recognized both within and outside of the UM community. Specifically, there have been several internal UM YouTube videos made (available upon request); Autism Speaks has taken an active interest in the EECS481 projects, and a VP (Marc Sirkin) from Autism Speaks flew to UM from New York for final presentations; and the PI has been invited to be a keynote speaker at the ESCoNS 2013 conference at USC in March, 2013.
Continuation:
There is high likelihood for success for continued efforts associated with this grant. If success is measured by game development, then we are developing between 15 and 25 games per year for persons with cognitive and physical disabilities. If success is measured by demographics, then we have a statistically higher number of students from under-represented groups taking the freshman-level course, who will hopefully matriculate into a higher percentage of under-represented students in upper level courses. We have an active research group of 10-15 students who, through internships and independent studies, will continue to develop these games and apps. We have received wide internal (UM) and external notice of our efforts. I have applied, unfortunately, unsuccessfully for grants from Autism Speaks and National Collegiate Innovators and Inventors Association (NCIIA). However, we are creating the infrastructure, in the form of a Limited Liability Corporation, to support the commercialization of the software games and apps with the long-term goal of becoming self-sustaining.
Dissemination:
The work completed with this grant will be presented at the Meaningful Play Conference (http://meaningfulplay.msu.edu/index.php) during Oct ’12. Additionally, the work will be presented at Entertainment Software and Cognitive Neurotherapeutics Society (http://www.escons.org/about_escons/) annual meeting in March ’13. In the future, work will be presented at the ACM SIGCSE (Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education) Conference held annually in March.In addition to these scholarly conferences, the work in this grant has received internal and external recognition. Several YouTube videos have been constructed in the College of Engineering, and there was mention of the efforts in USA Today. Some of the YouTube (and other) videos are included below:• http://forum.engin.umich.edu/2010/11/mobile-communications-technology-for.html;• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGE-sTD0Zdk&feature=youtu.be;• http://www.autismspeaks.org/blog/2012/05/01/hacking-autism-and-university-michigan;• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUT-Chcffqc&feature=youtu.be
Advice to your Colleagues:
Find a topic that the students can embrace and be enthused about. We have an incredible group of students at UM, and finding a topic/cause that gives them context for learning and exploring will always have great results.
