How To Court Computer Students? University Thinks It’s SIMple.

A recent study at UCLA found a fifty percent decline in computer science majors over the past four years. In an effort to spark a renewed interest in the computer programming field, Carnegie Mellon University has dreamed up an interesting idea. Daniel Lovering of the AP (via BusinessWeek) writes:

Carnegie Mellon University plans to incorporate characters and animation from the popular video game “The Sims” in its free educational software that strives to make computer programming more appealing to students.

The university will use the animation to enliven the next version of Alice, a teaching program developed over the past decade and used at more than 60 colleges and universities and about 100 high schools, said Randy Pausch, a computer science professor and director of the Alice Project.

“This is not some little crumb that got tossed. This is the most valuable intellectual property owned by the largest video game maker in the world,” Pausch said Friday. “For the intended demographic we’re trying to teach, ‘The Sims’ are more valuable than the Disney library…“

[tags]computer science,carnegie mellon,the sims,alice,randy pausch,educational software[/tags]