[game_edu] It's an interdisciplinary field

[Seth Sivak]

I am a current ETC student and I would agree that CMU has a very unique way
for handling inter-disciplinary collaboration and projects.  All students
take the same courses, regardless of undergraduate major.  After the first
semester the projects are 3/4 of the curriculum and they include teams with
various backgrounds.  Our project (www.activeadventuregame.com) had seven
people with these undergraduate majors: Mechanical Engineering, Computer
Science, Fine Art, Media Art, Tv/Video, Physics and Business Management.
Even during the first semester, which is all classes, the Building Virtual
Worlds class requires group projects with interdisciplinary teams and tight
deadlines.

This sort of curriculum is really only possible as a graduate school, but so
far I have no complaints.  I certainly feel that I have learned a great deal
about teamwork and how to understand the different roles in a team enough to
effectively communicate.

Seth

On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 11:30 AM, Chris Oltyan <oltyan at gmail.com> wrote:


> CMU has a partnership between the College of Fine arts and the CS

> department for their masters in Entertainment Technology.  If we have

> any ETC'ers around I'm sure they'd be able to speak on how the program

> has evolved over time, but its very much a multi-dicipline program

> where designers, programmers, artists, and musicians all collaborate

> to create the requirements of their courses.  I've been very impressed

> with how the program is handled and the quality of the students coming

> out of there.

>

> On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 11:07 AM, deb s <debsol at gmail.com> wrote:

> > A middle ground is to create an interdisciplinary degree program that

> > isn't it's own new department, but also isn't housed in just one

> > department.  That's what we did at Montgomery College (MD) with our

> > web development degrees and later with our gaming degrees.  Both pull

> > classes from CS, CG, and many other departments.  At one point we even

> > had some classes under an interdisciplinary course code designator (IS

> > for "Interdisciplinary Studies", but that got complicated and wasn't

> > necessary).  The IGDA framework was very helpful to us when we were

> > designing the program.

> >

> > Also, there was a post a while back about community colleges and how

> > to fit a gaming degree into a "two year" program.  At MC, we don't

> > think of it as a two year program.  We have partnerships with upper

> > level institutions (like U of Baltimore) for our students to transfer

> > easily into their programs, so we think of our gaming degree as the

> > first two years of a four year degree.  We have three tracks

> > (programming, art & animation, design & production) and provide

> > foundation level courses in 3D, programming, level design, and other

> > topics depending on the track chosen.  We make a point of advising

> > students that most employers are looking for at least a four year

> > degree (and in the case of more advanced programming careers, a

> > masters or higher), and that they should plan on transferring to get a

> > bachelors after completing the MC program.  I think many community

> > college programs are looked at as just two years of tech skill

> > training (not that there is anything wrong with that), but our program

> > is not like that.

> >

> > Finally, just like game dev, designing a game dev program is an

> > iterative process.  It's not always possible to get it perfect the

> > first time.  And as more and more students join the program, you can

> > offer more specialized and interesting classes and develop and refine

> > degree tracks, etc.

> >

> > Deb

> > www.studygaming.com

> >

> > On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 10:25 AM, Ian Schreiber <ai864 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> >> > The catch is this: new departments don't spring fully-formed into

> being out

> >> of nothing. They have to start in some other department, then split into

> >> their own in time.

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> >

>

>

>

> --

> Chris Oltyan

> Scrum Guy

> -----

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