Trial by a Many-Colored Flame: A Multi-disciplinary, Community-Centric Approach to Digital Media and Computing Education

Computing is currently overwhelmed by barriers to engagement and efficacy and suffers from a lack of diversity in participation. The field, while being substantially creative often distances itself from its artistic underpinnings. At the same time, those who view the field as a strictly technical endeavor often struggle in advanced software design. Through the use of game-based projects in a production studio course, this chapter explores two case examples that seek to challenge these notions. The course directly engages students in experiential, focused work that illustrates the field as a combination of creative practice and technical implementation. Students approached many of the activities in production studio through lenses that attempted clear-cut divisions between design, art, and development. Our challenge was to show the strength of blurring these lines in creating a quality production-level product. This chapter explores successes and challenges of this approach over successive offerings.