STEM Fuse, Construct 3 Announce Game Design Curriculum

With the STEM workforce in need of a boost, companies and legislators have tried various things to infuse more STEM-based learning in both K-12 and higher education. Iowa’s STEM Advisory Council doled out grants to create curriculum in fields that need to be filled with workers, and North Carolina’s governor declared April as STEM Month to create awareness of the need, among other efforts. In a somewhat less conventional effort, a STEM curriculum provider last month used web-based game-building software to develop a new high school curriculum for game design and programming.

Working with the web-based Construct 3 platform, STEM Fuse — a South Dakota-based company that makes digital STEM and computer science curriculum for K-12 schools — announced at last month’s ISTELive 22 conference that its new GAME:IT Advanced curriculum for high schools would be ready for the fall semester. In it, students, without needing any background knowledge of coding, will work on creating games for mobile devices while learning the intricacies of the physics, mechanics and multiplayers aspects involved, as well as in-app advertisements, UX and UI design, marketing and monetization, according to a news release. Additionally, students who take the curriculum will get an intro to JavaScript, it said.

STEM Fuse founder and CEO Carter Tatge said in a public statement that the company is focused on improving STEM education through curriculum that is easy to implement, and can be utilized by students with limited to no history in coding and game design.

“We designed our game design pathway of courses to feature Construct 3 for two simple yet powerful reasons: ease of use and flexibility,” Tatge said. “Construct 3 has plenty of capacity and horsepower for advanced users to create professional, studio-level quality games and products.”

The curriculum, according to Tatge, starts with beginner-level, drag-n-drop coding and jumps into learning and programming with JavaScript for the more advanced user, incorporating game design, computer science, STEM and multimedia technology. And at the end of the course, the release said, students can opt to take an industry certification exam.

The news release said GAME:IT Advanced is the latest in the series released by STEM Fuse. Other iterations include GAME:IT Elementary, GAME:IT Junior and GAME:IT Intermediate. The advanced version is recommended for students in grades 10-12, the release said.

This is not the first time STEM Fuse has been in the news this year for curriculum release. In April, the company worked with Full Sail University to grant teachers at hundreds of schools in the Southeast U.S. two years of free access to digital curriculum as well as professional development.