Game development workshops designed and delivered by peer mentors to increase student curiosity and interest in an introductory programming course

Student motivation in the Programming Fundamentals (CS1) course in our college has long been a problem. Our project utilized both peer modeling and game development to increase students' curiosity for programming and help them enjoy the learning process. Our project involved peer mentors in every aspect of the game development workshops. We guided peer mentors to design, develop and deliver game development workshops. The main goal is to motivate and retain early college IT students, especially traditionally underrepresented groups, such as females and underrepresented minorities (URM) in IT. The second goal is to improve peer mentors' professional development and career readiness. We conducted a pilot study in spring 2020. Shortly after the peer mentors conducted the first workshop in person in classrooms, the classes were moved online due to the COVID pandemic. The remaining workshops were forced to be converted to the online asynchronous format. This adaptation in fact gave us a unique opportunity to observe the difference of the two modalities. Survey data show that our approach was effective at increasing students' curiosity and enjoyment of programming. Female and URM students responded especially well to workshops conducted by peer mentors in the in-person sessions, better than their counterparts. However, the benefit seemed greatly reduced for them when the remaining workshops were forced to be converted to the online asynchronous format when classes were moved online. Our survey data also showed that 91% of students prefer the in-person workshop to the standard class format, while only 56% of students preferred the online asynchronous workshops to a standard programming assignment. The contrast between the two modalities shed light on the elements, such as peer modeling and personal interaction that are especially effective for increasing motivation and improving learning for underrepresented students in IT. A larger scale implementation is in planning and what we learned in the pilot study will help guide the project in the future for both the delivery and assessment of the workshops.