[game_edu] Call for Articles: August Issue of IGDA Newsletter

[pawlicki at cs.rochester.edu]

Beth,

Here is a submission from Greta Niu and myself.
It's a little over 500 words.

Thanks,

Ted Pawlicki, PhD
Undergraduate Program Director
Department of Computer Sciene
University of Rochester


ACADEMIC ALCHEMY :
Starting a Multidisciplinary Game Studies Program on a Shoestring

by

Ted. Pawlicki (Department of Computer Science)
Greta. Niu (Department of English/Media Studies)
University of Rochester, Rochester NY
7/25/10

Our challenge was to develop a genuinely shared academic experience which
was at once accessible and meaningful to students from both the
disciplines of Computer Science and Media Studies/English. It would be
easy enough to have a  tech-centric course for the CS majors, and an
analysis and writing course for the Media Studies/English majors, but
since our goal was interdisciplinary collaboration for intended to broaden
the perspectives of our students, we set out to craft a single experience
appealing to both cohorts.

Our approach was to design a seminar based class over the summer of 2009
ostensibly focusing on the user interface design issues associated with
gender portrayal in popular video games. Our thinking was that the more
tech-minded students might emphasize the analysis of human computer
interaction (HCI) and user interface issues, while our more media-minded
students could focus on critical analysis of content portrayal and
control. However, since it was the first time running such a class and we
were working with a more mature student cohort – mostly rising seniors -
we allowed the students a good deal of latitude in the selection of term
research projects. While over half looked at gender related issues, some
looked at HCI issues related to the portrayal of race, others at the
presentation and manipulation of space, or time, or economics.

We were fortunate enough to be awarded a small internal grant from the
Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender Studies based primarily on the
nature of the course content (gender portrayal in video games) and based
partially on the fact that women constitute an under-represented
demographic in all computer science programs. This grant enabled us to
outfit an existing computer lab with video game consoles equipped with
video capture equipment, and purchase game titles considered to be both
critically and commercially significant . In order to arrange for access
to lab space and to facilitate flexibility in teaching assignments, we
chose to run the experience as a summer course rather than during the
regular academic year.

In this seminar students had reading assignments on topics ranging from
critical video game analysis, the economic structure of the game industry,
 ludlogy, software engineering, user interface design, and gender studies
(syllabus available from authors). The students also had weekly game play
lab and associated writing assignments. In the game play analysis lab,
students always worked in pairs  in order to facilitate rigorous
discussion, analysis and to prevent the session from simply devolving into
an unstructured play time. One student was designated as note taker while
the others manipulated the controls – multiple pairs worked together on
multi-player games. The standard weekly expectation was to analyze how the
design choices surrounding user interface and HCI issues effected
portrayal of gender issues in the selected title.  In addition to written
analysis, students were expected to capture in game examples highlighting
issues for use in presentations during discussions. Students submitted
written analysis on-line, read and commented on their writings of their
peers in advance of the seminar meeting times. The seminar met twice a
week. Half the time was devoted to the presentation and analysis of the
reading assignment, and half devoted to the discussion of the game lab
experiences.

We considered this first step to be highly successful. We had a total of
sixteen students – eight female, eight male from diverse majors. We found
that the tech-centric computer science majors were able to engage in and
write about media issues, and that English majors were able to appreciate
technical issues related to human computer interaction, user interface
design, and software engineering practice without having to do
programming. Most importantly the level of abstraction facilitated
meaningful dialogue among students from widely divergent academic
disciplines. Our plan is to continue this course during the academic year.
Our short term goal is now to develop a two semester (Fall/Spring) course
sequence where the first term is devoted to conceptual design and
production issues and the second course is to have team based production
of games.












> Hello all! I am the editor-in-chief for the IGDA Perspectives

> Newsletter. Our August issue is themed around Game Education. I

> figured, of course, this would be a great place to let people know

> that we are currently accepting articles (usually around 500 words,

> although that's entirely flexible) concerning game education topics.

> Articles are due Monday, July 26 at midnight PST.

>

> Article topics might include but are not limited to:

> - The importance of game education.

> - Game education teaching strategies.

> - Workshop structures.

> - Courses and programs.

> - Practical vs. (or coinciding) theoretical education.

> - Recaps of game education events.

> - Reviews of software for game education.

> - Book reviews.

>

> Thanks much!

> - Beth

>

> --

> Beth Aileen Lameman, Ph.D. (ABD) | http://www.bethaileen.com

> Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace | http://www.abtec.org

> Simon Fraser University - Interactive Arts & Technology |

> http://siat.sfu.ca

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