Learning Computing through Transformative Works: A Case Study of Game Modding

Broadening participation in computing stands to benefit from investigating computing that happens in nontraditional spaces. To that end, we investigate computational work people engage in outside of the classroom and outside of industry, in game modding communities. Through a series of 9 interviews with a diverse group of young adults, we explore how a small community of fan game developers transitioned from traditional fannish activities like writing roleplays and drawing fan comics to reprogramming game code to make their own fan games, with our participants learning a variety of skills necessary for successfully working on collaborative computational projects. We analyze these interviews as a case study to propose potential classroom projects that draw inspiration from how our participants, many of whom are from groups traditionally underrepresented in computing, got involved in and learned programming for a major computational project. We propose designing an educational project for the classroom that embodies the following characteristics: 1) peer mentorship that emphasizes collaborative learning where students set their own pace; 2) familiarity and grounding within a media object as a starting point, something with a recognizable pattern like a visual novel, videogame, interactive website-something that students can see, dismantle, and reassemble in their own creative vision but still feel comfortable in knowing what a similar result looks like.