A curriculum for developing serious games for children with autism: A success story

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder, detectable early in development and characterized by the lack of socialization, development of language and patterns of rigid, repetitive, auto-stimulating behaviors that interfere with overall functioning of a person. Due to reduced level of attention and different style of learning, teaching children with ASD requires a particular set of tools and methods. Studies have shown that computer-based intervention, typically in form of serious games, can be effectively utilized for developing various skills, allowing children with disabilities both learning with teachers and practicing on their own time, when the taught concepts are presented in a fun, informal, and engaging way. Nonetheless, there is a limited amount of appropriately designed serious games for children with ASD, especially in less spread languages native to the children. In this paper we present a complete curriculum for final year Computer Science (CS) undergraduate students, aimed at developing web-based serious games for teaching children with and without autism basic concepts. In addition, we present multiple outcomes of such course taught by the authors, computer scientist and a psychologist and a special educator. We believe that inclusion of such curriculum in CS undergraduate programs could benefit both the students, children with ASD, teachers of both groups and the community in general.