Work in progress — Using social media to teach engineering process

Due to the outsourcing of many low level computing jobs, many students have a perception that there are very few computer science related jobs in the United States. Consequently, the number of students majoring in computer science has been decreasing. This project attempts to use social media as a means of attracting more students to study computer science and software engineering by exposing 16 to 20 year old students opportunities to the soft skills associated project management without being concerned about programming implementation details. It is an expectation that using a game setting to expose potential students to the rich set of activities that make up software engineering process may attract them to the consider the field as a course of study. An explicit goal of this project is to try to attract female students to the study of STEM coursework although the game is being designed to appeal to male students as well. It is also hoped to determine which types of engineering process activities are most attractive to female students. A prototype of proposed game will be completed during the summer of 2011.