Boosting employment prospects for neurodiverse people through video game development

Suitable for 14 to 19-year-olds (secondary and high schools, and college), this article and accompanying activity sheet can be used in the classroom or shared with students online.

This resource links to KS4 and KS5 Biology.

It can also be used as a careers resource and links to Gatsby Benchmarks:
Gatsby Benchmark 2: Learning from career and labour market information
Gatsby Benchmark 4: Linking curriculum learning to careers

• This teaching resource explains the work of Professor Leanne Chukoskie, a neuroscientist from Northeastern University, and Professor Pamela Cosman, an electrical engineer from the University of California, who have developed an internship based on video game design that aims to help people with autism spectrum disorder build their skills and access exciting opportunities in the workforce.

• This resource also contains interviews with Leanne and Pamela and offers insight into careers in neuroscience. If your students have questions for Leanne or Pamela, they can send them to them online through the Futurum Careers website.

• The activity sheet provides ‘talking points’ (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) to prompt students to reflect on Leanne and Pamela’s research, and tasks them to think about the challenges that people with autism face in the workplace, and to design an experiment that investigates how video games affect our eyes.

This resource was first published by Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, tech, engineering, maths, medicine (STEM) and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE).

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