Digital art application development: A project to increase motivation in systems development courses for bachelor students in computer engineering

Abstract

In this demonstration, we present some in-progress results of using digital art application development as an example of entertainment computing for increasing motivation and participation in a computer engineering undergraduate systems development course, with the purpose of improving the chances of reaching the intended learning outcomes. By stimulating motivation and participation via an openly defined project description of making an interactive art application in a competitive context, a variety of interesting project outcomes were produced, despite the fact that the project did not count towards the final grading of the course. The students made their applications by combining existing programming skills with the programming language Processing, lessons in Human-Computer-Interaction and software development methodologies.