Digital democracy: creating an online democracy education simulation in a software engineering class

Abstract

This work in progress project presents a computer game development approach to enhance history learning for middle school and high school students. This project seeks to create an innovative software package that will serve as a model for democracy education in Tennessee and the United States. Through the collaboration of professors of computer science and history, historical content from Middle Tennessee State University's Gore Center will be digitized and manipulated to create an interactive, group-oriented, computer-based simulation of how democracy works. In the first phase of this project we are designing a computer game that allows students to learn about the history of the Civil Rights Bill through the decisions that Senator Gore Sr. made. Senator Gore Sr. was a Tennessee Senator during the time of the Civil Rights Bill. We also present our experiences in using this real world project as a basis for the semester long team project development for undergraduate and graduate software engineering class.