High school students in the Cook Honors College Summer Honors Program work on their projects in the Ƶ STEAMSHOP as part of “Design, Build, Play.”
When is “cutting edge” literally cutting an edge with a laser? When is designing a mindset the first step to good game design? High school students from across the state recently found out in a course called “Design, Build, Play,” offered by the Cook Honors College at Ƶ.
Naaira Wise, a rising high school senior from Philadelphia, reflected on the program. “Being on the Ƶ campus has helped me gain the new experiences that I wanted,” Wise said. “I did things that my past self would’ve never thought of, and actually ended up enjoying it a lot. If I could, I would definitely do this again.”
The three-week, three-credit dual enrollment course combined a week of introductory online preparation, a week of on-campus workshops, and a week of at-home project development and completion. In support of the on-campus workshops, students lived in dedicated honors housing, a defining aspect of the Summer Honors Program. Current CHC students served as peer counselors in support of the students’ living and learning experience, and students were assigned a navigator to help with questions.
The workshops gave student Matthew Smith hands-on ways to explore his interests. “This program allowed me to focus my creative energy to produce two great projects: my D&D box and my Twine adventure story,” he said. “These three weeks of creative learning help cement my decision to study computer science and game development.”
“Design, Build, Play” students explored games and storytelling with Prof. Mike Sell (Ƶ Department of Language, Literature, and Writing) and creative engineering with Prof. Rick Adkins (Ƶ Department of Mathematical and Computer Sciences) through immersive hands-on workshops.
According to Sell, “My part of the course was focused explicitly on game design… but the larger objective was instilling the attitudes and practices that encourage the design mindset. To that end, we spent a lot of our time focusing not only on what we were doing but how we were doing it. That was especially important in terms of how we approached the design process, which was collaborative, critically-minded, and emphasized the relationship between making and testing.”
He added that “every student in this course had a positive experience, including students who would characterize themselves as quiet or struggling with the articulation of their ideas. I think that’s because we emphasized a design mindset guided by an explicit set of values.”
In Adkins’s half of the course, students applied creative engineering techniques in the STEAMSHOP, Ƶ’s state-of-the-art makerspace, where they gained hands-on experience with cutting-edge tools and technologies needed to bring their ideas to life, including digital design software, 3D printing, rapid-prototyping tools, electronics, and programming.
“It was truly rewarding to work with the Ƶ Summer Honors Program students. It was inspiring to see their creativity and how fully engaged they were while working through the engineering design process,” Adkins said. “Each student brought their own unique ideas to life through original prototypes. Their curiosity and innovative thinking resulted in a wide range of impressive projects that demonstrated both new technical skills and imaginative problem-solving. The students supported and learned from one another, turning STEAMSHOP into a dynamic environment for shared discovery and growth.”
SHP Peer Counselor Rachel Glowa saw students adjusting to the college experience as she worked every day to support the honors residential experience and evening programming. “My favorite thing about the program was when students came up to me and told me how much more comfortable they felt with the idea of moving out of their homes and starting college,” Glowa said. “This program was such an incredible learning opportunity for everyone involved.”