End of Semester Software Problem Solving and Design Projects in a First-Year Engineering Course

Introductory program courses often have a final project. The development of a game using programming languages learned is possible choice for this project. A large Midwestern public university has been assigning a programming project at the end of it's first semester, first-year engineering course. Previous projects have included an IR detection program and programming a train scenario. Recently, faculty have been piloting a game software design project in these courses. Student survey results have demonstrated that students prefer the game project to the other projects for many reasons including they are more enjoyable and they help develop necessary engineering skills. The results from this pilot have lead to many questions that will be explored in future studies.