The fact that Chris Mattera and Mike Dumont spent part of their summer vacation playing computer games wouldn’t surprise anybody who knows them -- or most teen-age boys these days.

Instead of spending all of their time at the beach or the ballpark, Mattera and Dumont waged pixilated battles between gruesome-looking alligators, other amphibian warriors and the occasional fighting machine in a computer game called “Pond Wars.”

What might surprise some is that Mattera, Dumont and others who took part in the aquatic battles were doing more than playing computer games. They were building them, and, in the process, learning the basics of computer science in a novel program developed at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) with funding and support from Microsoft Research External Research Programs group (MSR ER&P).

The Reality and Programming Together (RAPT) program is a prime example of how U.S. colleges and universities hope to reverse the ongoing decline in computer science enrollment by taking advantage of the nearly ubiquitous interest among teens and twentysomethings in computer games. This new breed of computer science classes seeks to capture and retain students, as well as improve instruction, by integrating the basics of computer science into lessons on designing and building computer games.

The RIT program also demonstrates the vital role of technology leaders such as Microsoft in the success and adoption of these new approaches to computer science instruction.