One of these is Human Centered Computing, focusing on topics where computer science overlaps with psychology, cognitive science, and social science to address topics like
The GameDev Club meets Tuesdays at 7 in DLC 170. This is a great organization for students who enjoy playing or developing games. We have a number of alums in the industry who are local and sometimes come to GameDev meetings.
For information about GameDev, contact Tyler.Stevenson@colorado.edu, the current club president.
We've offered a course in game design for education for several years, in spring: CSCI 4830. This course is part of an ongoing research program on using games in education. For a long time many people, including Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, have felt that games should be powerful educational tools.
Our experience has been that it is much more difficult than people think to create games that are strongly engaging for players, and provide deep learning opportunities. Drill and practice games, like Reader Rabbit, on the one hand, and cultural immersion games, like America's Army, on the other, have enjoyed a good deal of success, but games to teach challenging concepts have proved elusive. Students in the game design for education course have created several hundred games, some of which are fun to play, but none of which are clear winners as educational tools. You can sample the games online. We're not the only ones grappling with these problems; here's a video discussion of efforts at Stanford.
CU scientists have been more successful in using game creation as a way to build interest in CS among K12 students. CU research professor (and alum) Alex Repenning leads the Scalable Game Design program that has reached more than 1500 students in Colorado and neighboring states. This project also provided much of the background for a workshop for high school teachers, with sponsorship from Google's CS4HS program. The Scalable Game Design project is also contributing to the national conversation about computational thinking, a perspective on how computer science makes intellectual contributions to solving problems in a variety of fields.