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GDC07: Teaching Methods
Tracy Fullerton introduced the topic of teaching methods (powerpoint) for a working session challenged to "develop brand new curriculum for an emerging field of study in a learning environment which is already overtaxed and arguably ineffective" and "blaze through some interesting out-of-the box thinking."
Reports from each working group are included as Comments and Powerpoint:
Community building
Collaborative projects
Managing the scope of student game projects
Building interdisciplinary student teams
Assigning games as “texts” for game studies courses
Issues in building & maintaining game libraries
Models for inter-institutional collaboration
Balancing theory and practice
Competitions and festivals as learning objectives
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Beth A. Dillon
Reports from each working group are included as Comments and Powerpoint:
Community building
Collaborative projects
Managing the scope of student game projects
Building interdisciplinary student teams
Assigning games as “texts” for game studies courses
Issues in building & maintaining game libraries
Models for inter-institutional collaboration
Balancing theory and practice
Competitions and festivals as learning objectives
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Beth A. Dillon
9 Comments:
Notes from "Collaborative Projects"
Students reviewing students: some part of grade is from those reviews
Team leaders also evaluated along with the whole group on a project
If one person not pulling weight, then bring in the teacher
Can be very difficult to evaluate individual work in a group, of course, but the point is to participate, not necessarily to succeed
Junior-level game class as part of 3-year game project
Roles change over soph-jr-sr sequence
Sometimes a project can take six years; rolls over from group to group
OR: One group, over two years. Start with (e.g.) concept, then graphics, then story, on up to the actual programming and pitch to company
A project group will include laborers and managers; as they age they move up
Much depends on length of time students have
Initial excitement vs. second-term burnout
Collaboration is a critical skill for the real world, but hard to justify to admin
Every team has faculty mentor, but students must be given only rough guidelines
Monthly postmortems
Team leaders generally chosen by age/experience
Everyone should have a chance to lead
Goal is to learn, not to develop a game
Must learn what you like, what you’re good at—that’s what school is for
Don’t expect grads to go straight to EA
They learn business, entrepreneurship
Expected to start small, and to expect it
Supply of graduates will exceed demand
How to get students away from first-person shooters?
Need to understand games are much broader
But college is a chance to indulge one’s proclivities
Have students propose games, vote on top five, class does five projects
Can combine them, as in Remission
Teachers love collaborative projects; students don’t and departments/administers don’t
Separate projects for separate classes?
Very cool if you can spread it across, but you don’t want one project for all the classes
Need a balance of individual and collaborative work
How to get students to work toward a result anyone might want to buy
Have an actual prospective customer critique and give feedback (requirements capture)
Then company “interns” the group for a third year (after two-year project).
Seek more crossdepartmental (art, music, programming) and even multi-institutional collaboration.
Notes from "Theory and Practice"
The definition of theory and practice differs depending on
Who you are/what you are teaching
Whether you have a full degree program, or a few
What’s the outcome desired?
a beautiful project/portfolio,
a deep understanding of theory with conceptual prototypes,
deep knowledge of a given tool
or all of the above.
How much do industry demands dictate specific tool/language knowledge?
Animation studios will often take a skilled traditional animator vs someone with skills in a tools set as its easier to teach the tool. Is that similar for the game industry?
Instructor Experiences
One programming teacher, over the course of three iterations of the same class, went from heavy in theory to teaching only the API. The latter group had the best projects but it was not clear what what else they walked away with.
Our assert creation instructor had found that his balance of 1/3rd theory, 1/3rd application, 1/3rd of class time for practice has proven the best mix for asset creation.
One theory and narrative professor ignores tool choice and leaves that up to the student but students will often run into trouble balancing technical and narrative focus during the prototype implementation stage.
If the theory focused on is game play, level and puzzle design, etc it may be best to pick a lightweight tools for shorter learning curves and more focus on development timelines. Playability, etc.
If the focus of the course is technical, the desired outcomes listed above should help decide the balance.
Notes from "Games as 'Text'"
What is the purpose of writing about games?
"Magician training school"
How to write?
mechanics
audience
Game Assignments
Use a game
analyze different aspects
the interface
older games
force them to go beyond eye candy
useful as models for student projects
Use movies as examples
Choose your own game
write about over the course period
Use a board game
mechanics
Diplomacy
What Students Need
Tools
conceptual vocabulary
narrative
acts, hero's quest
books
Rollins and Adams
Rules of Play
Handbook of Game Design
Examples
films
board games
video games
video clips from IGN
Feedback
writing and feedback
Assignments
Pick a game
analyze using different topics over the quarter
Write a game review
using industry standards
Game syllabus
key defining games
common discussion
Game demo
work through the same scenes
Machinima
create a scene
Notes from "Community Building"
Faculty community
Have many opportunities with conferences, IGDA, SIGGRAPH etc.
Need help to build community among our students
Game developer’s club
IGDA Student Chapter
ACM Chapters
Game competitions
Game/arts studio lab space
Informal lab space outside a classroom lab (with a couch, tables, coffee and food)
Have labs open during breaks
Key card access
Make it more of a social space
Give students some control of space
Pay for “your lab” with lab fees
Have students “maintain” the lab
Attract more women
Hire female students to work in the studio
Recruit more students
Email students that are taking a math class to recruit for a particular class or degree
Collaborative team projects
Collaborative projects across the curriculum
Art, CAD, Social Science, English
Offer money, offer extra credit
Alumni
Email list of alumni
Get on list close to graduation
Yahoo email list – News & Current Events
Have alumni talk to current students
Deterrents
Students don’t want to share their “great game” idea
Need to figure out way to work around the IT department
Lots of organizations are competing for students
World of Warcraft
Second Life
MMOs
Other campus organizations – frats/sororities
Participants
Yusuf Pisan, Univ of Technology, Sydney
Jerry Rosenberg, Edmonds Community College, Lakeland, WA
Matthew Bivens, Leuzinger High School, Lawndale, CA
Ian Horswill, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL
Carlotta Eaton, New River Community College, Dublin, VA
Notes on "Inter-institutional Collaboration"
Industry wants schools to share resources
Schools may not want to share $
“job sharing/posting” with student projects
Instructors find partners across schools and have mutually timed indep. studies/classes and share projects
Help fill missing holes on teams
Help schools with diff. strengths
XSI Base, students post their work, blogging, build relationships (grassroots), growing
Companies recruiting
Coordinate with your “neighbors” for showcases/visits so that companies recruiters can “sweep” through your area and not compete with schools (idea modeled off of PhD programs coordinating visit days)
Build rapport of student work/raise standards across schools
Devil’s advocate: cooperation bad?
If you’re in, not want to give it up
Survival of the fittest? (game programs die, student backlash, programs become very selective)
Maybe some schools calling “game student” not really, could hurt view of “real” game students
Is everyone jumping in on the bandwagon? Also programs suffer if they’ve not been given proper internal support/resources
Peer review and consulting
Longer-time faculty/schools help other schools/program build the new program
Curriculum review board? Are people afraid?
Separate institution for peer review—third party accreditation? Maybe more collaborative/collegiate organization
Voluntary list of people to help—IGDA maintain list?
Issues of who owns your school
Conferences
GDC
What’s “must go to”? Is GDC it?
SIGGRAPH and game track
IDMAA internation digital media arts assoc.
How many conferences? All of this is expensive and time consuming—maybe we don’t have *THE* academic game conf?
IDGA is “education friendly”
GDC education proposals get “dumped” to IGDA (set up educator’s track for subset of IGDA track?)
Educators educate other educators
Collaboration with research
Ex) mobile gaming
Could be a lot more with research
Notes on "Game Library"
Who thinks it’s:
old games for students to play?
games students have made to show off to the public?
code libraries?
Old games for students to play
What’s the year of birth of your youngest student?
Were they alive concurrently with Ronald Reagan’s presidency?
Do they know that not all games were 3D?
Value in old-new games
Atari – PS3/XBox360/Wii
Old games were made by one person (design, art, programming), in assembly
Simplicity of design can have value
Dig Dug is still fun
Try game genres outside of what they would buy
new experiences
Why did certain games succeed?
Pac-Man, Starcraft, Tetris, Chess, Elite, WOW, GTA3, Unreal Tournament, Doom, etc.
What gave them fanatics?
What games failed?
Should they play ET?
Warning
Make all students cancel their WOW accounts at the start of the semester
How can students show-off their games?
Online, playable Java applets
Ref NYU’s Ken Perlin’s homepage
Downloadable EXEs
Stony Brook University’s CSE 380 homepage
DVDs
record gameplay
good for console portfolios
And game code libraries?
Is there documentation?
Is there documentation?
Is there documentation?
Is there documentation?
Is there documentation?
Is there documentation?
Is there documentation?
But seriously …
Decisions to make:
C++ vs C#/Java
Inside vs Outside the Game Engine
Professional vs Self-made Game Engine
Course code reuse?
Game genre sample packs
Notes on "Interdisciplinary Student Teams" (Table 1)
Issues & Strategies
Human Communication Issues
Internship program example
Where students must work in teams and then build actual products
Not as much communications as stereotypes and profiling as “arty” , “geeks”, “and “superpeople” in their area
Management is strategy to combat the profiling with appropriate assignments for them to work together and with questions that relate to the game and not to each other.
1/3 art … 1/3 programming … 1/3 story & gameplay
Management Issues
Trying to find artist that are willing to compromise on style
Programmers hate UI but the game still needs it
Numbers of students that start, find out that it’s not as much fun to build a game as to play it!, so there is attrition that needs to build up
One environment in an academic environment that works is to build a non-credit club that allows for portfolio building.
Publishing the game encourages a focus on the game http://www.gamecreation.org
Producer is firewall that assists in negotiation between differences.
Short time frames force decisions
Programmers have the POWER since they determine if something can be done, so programming is a bottom line for leadership.
Creating “real-world” contexts over the project will encourage a focus to work together
Ideas must be presented to the producer, then bounce back for feedback from the team, then final defense with the Producer.
Academic Issues
5 students out of 15 do all of the work
Multiple streams (art, programming, designers) have students in each team and the game is a result of the balance of the team in any semester
Off site work can facilitate inter-institutional outsourcing
Team teaching is “a pain in the a_ _ “ but interdisciplinary requirements require equal expertise on the faculty
Portfolio Credits is an incentive for both faculty and students (publish or perish – and job portfolio)
You can’t force a student to care
More difficult to see free-loading in programming, but it does stand out in the art and audio.
Bring in professionals to help with SCOPE issues
How do you pass off responsibilities to students who have no experience with management?
One suggestion for many issues is to be the “fly on the wall” and make sure the faculty knows what is going on, and how people are interacting.
Academic Administration Issues
Silos of interdisciplinary talent
Credit distribution and department ownership of tuition dollars
Faculty time or course release time
Solutions would be Provost Level interdisciplinary majors
Honors Programs for Capstone Experiences
Notes on "Interdisciplinary Student Teams" (Table 2)
Amy Chaaban, Scott Roberts, Dana Wortman, Rodrigo Obando, Dani Castillo, Rob Martyn, Kathleen Harmeyer, Patrick Holmlund, Craig A. Lindley, Lennart Nacke
Definition
Students level
They have different majors
Different kinds of people with different skills
Inhomogeneous groups
Everybody needs to feel equally invested
Establishing a vocabulary
Word values
Extending the communication process
Ranks against traditional bureaucracy
Cañada College
Start with faculty
Get them talking
All teachers
Art Institute of Washington
Firing students in teams
Team mates provide input for the grade
Promote individual responsibility
DePaul University
Co-teaching with the industry
Real-world approach
Administration overhead as a problem
Waubonsee Community College
Small scope of projects
Gaming club factors in
Creating a class format from student projects as a major challenge
University of Michigan-Dearborn
Students get to pick
Own projects
Own team mates
Coordinating between two different unis
Teams meet beforehand
Uni Magdeburg
Students have interdisciplinary major
Computational visualistics
Coordinate between
Computer science
Industrial design (arts)
Have them as the coordinators in the projects
Högskolan på Gotland
Student projects very late in the program
Organic process
Students get to pick their teams in third year
Luleå Technical University
Courses start with a common frame
Students get to pitch their ideas to each other
Faculty assists in assigning teams
Mentors from outside the University
University of Baltimore
Faculty members make the teams
Connection between team members does not work well
Differences in performance
Bottom groups need more teacher input
Conclusion
Individual programs have different requirements
Experience in both types of teams
Not necessarily in the same class
But common curriculum
Use of tools for communication among team members
Blogs, forums, subversion, etc.
Progressive team sizes
Notes on "Competitions and Festivals as Learning Objectives"
Expos
Able to make contacts within the community
Discuss real-life experiences from industry professionals
Demonstrates PR, business/management principles (e.g. e-business), & organizational skills
Example: G2Expo (www.g2expo.com)
Clubs
Builds community, sharing skills/ideas, learn game history/genres
Game Jams/Competitions/Paper Design –
Some of the best artwork comes from students who are put on a timeline; it becomes a catalyst for creativity
Promotes team-building & encouragement
Emphasizes problem-solving & testing of designs
Provides real prototyping experience
Game Jam Circuit leading to a GDC award
Introduce students into a professional environment
Builds a better connection between academics and industry and between schools
Multiple competitions/awards that focus on different areas
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