Are you interested in playing a game where you can review for a test while simultaneously saving the world from a zombie apocalypse?  

This video game, along with others that are educational and entertaining, was developed by the brilliant minds of computer science students at Whitworth University. 

On Friday, Sept. 28, the university’s computer science department wrapped up its first annual Community Building week. Partnered with Hewitt Learning Center, the CS department created this event to encourage students to build community, their skills and meaningful projects.  

15 teams of computer science students spent the past week brainstorming, developing and coding an educational game with the theme of “Machines of the Mind” that could potentially be used by Hewitt Learning to make education fun for their students.  

“There’s absolutely projects in here that we’re thinking about and moving forward with,” said computer science professor Scott Griffith.  

Each team presented a 30-second video showcasing their project at the wrap-up ceremony. All teams won humorously named awards presented by the faculty, such as “Most Help Junior High Kids Color Coordinate When They Dress for School,” which was a color puzzle game, and “Most Likely to Scare Elementary Kids into Math,” which was a math escape room. 

Team Zero, called “Temporal,” made a game focused on accessibility. They wanted to create a video game that was accessible to visually impaired people, which is not an easy task, according to Griffith. Griffith said that the students of this team had to put substantial thought and intentionality into this project, which showed just how much they cared about creating something meaningful throughout the week.

The details of the project were kept a secret from the participants until the kick-off event the previous Friday. “It was interesting to have to work together with a team you’ve never met on a project that you had no idea what it was going to be until you got there,” said Grant Gustafson, a first-year computer science student. 

For many first-year students, this was their first computer science-related project. On top of not knowing what their project was going to be, they also didn’t know how they were going to contribute to their team, according to Karissa Nakamura, a first-year applied math major.  

“I found a lot of the things I was nervous about weren’t really as important as I thought they would be,” said Nakamura. “Overall, I really liked working with my teammates and it was a fun week.”  

A struggle throughout the week was that students still had their academic and athletic commitments that conflicted with working on this project. “There was a lot of difficulty in trying to figure out when we could meet up as a group,” said Gustafson, “[but] when we actually sat down with like a majority people in the group and made progress, it was incredible.”   

The faculty had predicted that groups would have a difficult time finding times to meet up and work on the project but didn’t realize it would be as big of a problem as it was, according to Griffith. “We have some things that we’re working on internally to address that better next time,” said Griffith.  

The week wasn’t over after the wrap-up ceremony, at least not for the professors. They each collected feedback and data from their students about how they felt the week went so they could adapt and adjust for next year. According to Griffith, they currently have ideas in the works to implement to encourage team building and communication before the event kicks off next year. 

“I know a lot of stress, a lot of work, and a lot of frustration has gone into this week. We are proud of the work you did,” commented Griffith at the wrap-up ceremony. “Great job for the first annual computer science community building week.”  

Students hope that this event continues for years to come. “I would be pretty excited to be able to come back another year and actually know what I’m doing,” said Nakamura. “To be able to contribute more on the coding side of things and have that experience to help out new students as well.” 

To see the work the students did for Community Building Week, visit https://cscbw-website.whitworth.edu/.