Students Help with NASA Videogame Reengineering
Tue Sep 18 2007
Two Wheeling Jesuit University computer science students will help the NASA-sponsored Classroom of the Future analyze its Selene videogame and produce a reengineering design document.
The Classroom of the Future™, located in the Center for Educational Technologies® at Wheeling Jesuit University, created the Selene videogame this year as part of an investigation into how students can best learn NASA science through videogames. The lunar science online game is the centerpiece of the study that began in May. Selene players create their own moon and then pepper it with impact craters and flood it with lava to mimic the development of Earth's Moon.
The students will work on Selene as part of a software engineering class they are enrolled in. They will use Selene as a case study for software engineering principles and processes. They will review Selene's source code and recommend the direction a reengineering of the game should take (for example, new development platform or revision of existing code using the existing platform).
The Classroom of the Future is working with the university as part of NASA Office of Education performance outcomes aimed at developing a STEM workforce in disciplines needed to achieve NASA's strategic goals.
Overseeing the students is Dr. Bev Carter, an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at Wheeling Jesuit University.
