Monica M. McGill, Ed.D.

Before coming to Bradley, Dr. McGill worked as a Systems Analyst and Computer Scientist in both industry and government. Her professional background includes formal methodologies to ensure code correctness, automated theorem provers, database management systems, and system design and development. She also served as an adjunct faculty member at the National Cryptological School teaching logic and formal methods.

Presently, Dr. McGill is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Interactive Media. Her research areas include curriculum and instruction of game degree programs, development skills required by industry, development and evaluation of serious games, and improvement of programming and software development education for all students through increased student engagement.

In the classroom, Dr. McGill is overseeing student project work in Torque and Unity, both commercially used game development tools. She also facilitates a course on game development in Flash/ActionScript. Dr. McGill uses interactive robots to introduce Interactive Media students to programming.

You can follow Dr. McGill on twitter (virtuallyFine): https://twitter.com/#!/virtuallyFine.

Education

Ed.D. Curriculum & Instruction, Illinois State University, August 2010.

M.S., Computer Science, George Washington University, May 1989.

B.S., Computer Science & Mathematics, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, January 1986.

Current Research/Work in Progress

DIGEM - Designing with Information Gathering for Engineering Mechanics. A serious game under development for mechanical engineering students by students in BU game programs.

Game Degree Programs - Student and Faculty Demographics in the US, Canada, and UK. With Amber Settle, DePaul University. 

Adapting SCRUM/Agile processes for Production Courses. (Undergoing Data Collection.)

Entry-level skills required for studio positions. With Amber Settle, DePaul University. (Beginning stages.)

Peer-reviewed publications

Undergraduate Game Degree Programs in the US and UK: The Curriculum Planning Process. Journal article accepted to ACM Transactions on Computing Education. Publication anticipated June 2012. 

Identifying Effects of Institutional Resources and Support on Computing Faculty Research Productivity, Tenure, and Promotion. With Amber Settle, DePaul University. International Journal of Doctoral Studies, April 2012. 

Student Motivation and Attitudes using Personal Robots in a CS0 Course for Non-Computer Science Majors. Trans. Comput. Educ. 12, 1, Article 4 (March 2012), 32 pages. 

Motivations and informing frameworks of game degree programs in the United Kingdom and the United States
Monica M. McGill
SIGITE '11 Proceedings of the 2011 conference on Information technology education, 2011

M.M. McGill and A. Settle. 2011. Computing faculty tenure and promotion requirements at USA and Canadian post-secondary institutions. In Proceedings of the 2011 conference on Information technology education (SIGITE '11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 133-138. 

Collaborative design of cross-disciplinary game minors based on the IGDA curriculum framework
Monica M. McGill
ITiCSE '10 Proceedings of the fifteenth annual conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education, 2010
M. McGill. 2010. Undergraduate Game Degree Programs in the United Kingdom and United States: A Comparison of the Curriculum Planning Process. Dissertation. Illinois State University.

Defining the expectation gap: a comparison of industry needs and existing game development curriculum
Monica M. McGill
FDG '09 Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Foundations of Digital Games, 2009

Evaluating the effectiveness of hypothesis-based digital learning games in high school science curriculum
Monica M. McGill
FDG '09 Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Foundations of Digital Games, 2009

Weighted game developer qualifications for consideration in curriculum development
Monica McGill
SIGCSE '09 Proceedings of the 40th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education, 2009

Critical skills for game developers: an analysis of skills sought by industry
Monica McGill
Future Play '08 Proceedings of the 2008 Conference on Future Play: Research, Play, Share, 2008

A. Patton and M. McGill. 2006. Student Portfolios and Software Quality Metrics In Computer Science Education, Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges Central Plains Region, April 2006.

Achieving Modularity and Consistency in a Large Information System Using INGRES/ Windows4GL, M. (McGill) Lu, Ingres World '94 Proceedings, October 1994.

Guidelines for Formal Verification Environments:  Overview and Rationale, M. McGill Lu and B. Mayer, Proceedings of the 12th National Computer Security Conference, October 1989.

Guidelines for Formal Verification Systems, B. Mayer and M. McGill Lu, National Security Center Rainbow Series for Secure Systems, April 1989.  http://www.fas.org/irp/nsa/rainbow/tg014.htm

Invited Speaking Engagements

Connections Conference 2012. Invited talk: ‘Postsecondary Game Programming Curriculum and Career Opportunities’. St Charles, Illinois. March 2012. 

Computing Research Association Snowbird Conference 2010. Invited panel presenter: 'Education in the Magic Circle: The Promise of Game'. July 2010.

General Publications

Industry's Role in the Development of Game Degree Programs. International Game Developers Association. Monthly Newsletter. August 2010.