From: Kelvin Sung [KSung@uwb.edu]

Sent: Saturday, May 24, 2008 4:49 PM

To: John Nordlinger

Cc: ksung@u.washington.edu; Ivan Lumala

Subject: Final Project Report: Award Number: 15871 (XNA Based Games-Themed Programming Assignments)

FINAL PROJECT REPORT

Award Number 15871: XNA Based Games-Themed Programming Assignments [XGA]

1. Summary of Accomplishments: This project is designed to enable presentation of foundational (CS1/2) programming concepts in the context of game-themed applications, and to bring gaming-themed programming classes to regular faculty members who may not have background in either Computer Graphics (CG)  or computer gaming. Base on the top-down CG foundation, we were able to rapidly prototype, and demonstrate the simplicity and effectiveness of our game-themed assignments. Our results are well received by the CS1/2 and computer gaming communities where we have published our results in the GDCSE international conference [1] in ACM flagship conferences in computer graphics (SIGGRAPH) [2], and computer science education (SIGCSE) [3]. We have been invited to describe the details of our work in traditional research-oriented journals [4, 5]. We have begun to disseminate our results in peer reviewed venues [6, 7] and have been invited to present workshops at conferences [8], university [9], research facility [10], including a full-day workshop at the 2008 ACM SIGCSE conference [11], and internationally [12, 13]. We continue to seek out opportunities for sharing our results [14].

2. Summary of Deliverables: All of our work and results are publically available on our project web-site. The following are references:

a. Public accessible Web-sites:

1. Project Web-site: http://depts.washington.edu/cmmr/Research/XNA_Games/

2. Courseware materials: http://depts.washington.edu/cmmr/Research/XNA_Games/2008.2.R.99/ReleaseGuide.html

3. Workshop materials:

i. Long version:  (material for a 3-5 hour workshop) http://depts.washington.edu/cmmr/Research/XNA_Games/2008_MSR_GS/index.htm

ii. Short versions:  (material for a 1.5-2.5 hour workshop) http://depts.washington.edu/cmmr/Research/XNA_Games/2008_BYU_XNA/index.htm

b. Repository at MSDN Academic Alliance: We are in the process or depositing our results to the MSDN AA.

3. Public Interests:

a. Publicities during the project:

1. On campus: UWeek article: http://uwnews.org/uweek/uweekarticle.asp?visitsource=uwkmail&articleID=32871

2. On campus: The Daily article: http://www.thedaily.washington.edu/article/2007/5/22/uwBothellProfessorUsesXboxToTeachStudents

b. Interests, collaboration, and potential adoption:

1. Fast ray tracing group at University of Utah. Professor Peter Shirley is interested in understanding the impact of their fast ray tracing architecture will have on the future computer graphics and computer gaming classes. We have collaborated and have obtained some initial results (e.g., [2, 5]).

2. University of Washington Institute for Surgical and Intervention Simulation (ISIS): Dr. Brian Ross, Executive Director of The Institute for Surgical & Interventional Simulation (ISIS: http://www.isis.washington.edu/) at the UW Seattle campus contacted us about our work. The ISIS is interested in a hardware solution that involves: economical, fast, reliable, graphics device for supporting surgical simulations. The XBOX fits the description almost perfectly! We have had several meetings discussing potential future collaborations.

3. Universititi Teknologi Malaysia (UMT): Professor Abdullah Bade from UMT is interested in inviting me over to give some workshops and guest lectures. Due to the vast distance, we are still trying to figure out the logistic.

4. Howard Francis from Pikeville College: Howard has sent us email requesting information on our materials. This is on-going.

5. Beijing University of Technology: currently in contact for adoption of materials.

6. University of Washington, Games for Learning Center (G4L): we collaborated with Professor Popvic from the CSE department over at UW Seattle in proposing the G4L center.

4. Current Status: Thank you for the continue generous support from Microsoft Research, we have already begun establishing the framework for next phase of the Game-Themed Assignments Project. We are studying approaches to generalize our results for a “Game-Themed CS1” course. We have commenced with the design phase of this new project where the development phase should begin during the summer.

5. REFERENCES:

[1] K. Sung, M. Panitz, R. Rosenberg, R. Anderson, "Assessing Game-Themed Programming Assignments for CS1/2 Courses," Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Game Development in Computer Science Education (GDCSE’08), Feb 2008 [Acceptance rate: 15 of 60 (25%)].

[2] P. Shirley, K. Sung, E. Brunvand, A. Davis, S. Parker, S. Boulos, "Rethinking Graphics and Gaming Courses Because of Fast Ray Tracing, " in SIGGRAPH 2007 Educator’s Program Conference CD/DVD-ROM, August 2007.

[3] K. Sung, M. Panitz, S. Wallace, R. Anderson, and J. Nordlinger, "Game-Themed Programming Assignments: The Faculty Perspective," Proceedings of the 39th SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (Portland, OR, USA, March 12-15, 2008) SIGCSE '08, PP. 300-304 [Acceptance rate: 100 of 324 (~31%)].

[4] K. Sung, M. Panitz, R. Rosenberg, R. Anderson, "CS1/2 Game-Themed Programming Assignments for Faculty," Journal of Game Development, Vol. 3, Issue 2, March 2008, PP. 27-47, (invited full-length paper based on SIGCSE 2008 conference paper).

[5] P. Shirley, K. Sung, E. Brunvand, A. Davis, S. Parker, S. Boulos, "Fast Ray Tracing and The Potential Effects on Graphics and Gaming Courses," Computer & Graphics, Vol. 32, Issue 2, PP. 260-267, April 2008 (invited full-length paper based on ACM SIGGRAPH 2007 Educator’s Program conference paper).

[6] K. Sung, and M. Panitz, "Developing Applications on the XBOX 360 Console," Peer reviewed conference tutorial at The Journal of Computing Sciences in College, Workshop at the Ninth Annual CCSC-NW Conference, October, 2007. (Link to the Main page of the tutorial notes).

[7] K. Sung, M. Panitz, and R. Anderson, "Program Development with Graphical User Interface," Peer reviewed conference tutorial at The Journal of Computing Sciences in College, Workshop at the Ninth Annual CCSC-NW Conference, October, 2007.  (Link to the Main page of the tutorial notes).

[8] K. Sung, "Developing Programming Assignments on the XBOX 360 Console," Invited Tutorial presentation at the GDCSE’08 Conference, February 2008 (Link to the Main page of the tutorial notes).

[9] K. Sung, "Developing simple games for the XBOX 360 Console," Invited Tutorial, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, March 2008 (Link to the Main page of the tutorial notes).

[10] K. Sung, "Developing Game-Themed Applications with XNA Game Studio V2.0," Invited Full day workshop, Microsoft Research, Redmond, Washington, April 2008 (Link to the Main page of the tutorial notes).

[11] K. Sung, "Developing Programming Assignments on the XBOX 360 Console," Invited Full-day Workshop offered at the SIGCSE’08 Conference, March 2008 (Link to the Main page of the tutorial notes).

[12] K. Sung, "Computer Games and Teaching of Computer Graphics," Invited Talk, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong, China, May 2007. (Here is the ppt).

[13] K. Sung, "Integrating Computer Gaming into Computer Graphics Courses," Microsoft Research Asia, Gaming and Graphics Workshop, Beijing, May 2007. (Here is the ppt).

[14] M. Panitz, and K. Sung, "Incrementally Incorporating Video Games Into Instruction Using XNA Game-Themed Assignments," Submitted Tutorial Proposal to CCSC-NW 2008 Conference, March, 2008.

[15] Z. Popvic (PI), J. Bransford (Co-PI), and K. Sung (Co-PI), "The University of Washington Games for Learning Center," Microsoft Research, Invited RFP, $2,750,000- (UWB: $200,000-) submitted February 2008.