[game_edu] Training vs. Education (was Industry luminaries..)

[Ian Schreiber]

Let me turn that around a bit. Yes, it is true that studios would like to hire 
students who can hit the ground running (and in some cases they find such 
people, so this is not entirely hopeless, particularly if some of the 
"training/vocational" side of things are electives they take in their final 
year).

However, I think most companies would settle for hiring a student who might not 
know the specific technologies they use (maybe they hire an artist who knows 
Maya but they use Max at this studio, or maybe they hired a computer science 
student who hasn't learned Unity) but that student knows the fundamentals, has 
the theory and the basic skills, and is capable of sitting down and learning the 
new tools with minimal supervision. In other words, someone who knows the theory 
that is common to all tasks, and who has learned how to learn.

And unfortunately, I see a lot of students who graduate with their Bachelor's 
degrees and apparently do not even have that capability. And at that point, I 
would say the industry would be quite right to be a bit miffed with whatever 
school produced such a student.

- Ian




________________________________
From: Scott Nicholson <srnichol at syr.edu>
To: "game_edu at igda.org" <game_edu at igda.org>
Sent: Tue, October 19, 2010 8:30:21 AM
Subject: [game_edu] Training vs. Education (was Industry luminaries..)

I'm a professor at Syracuse University's School of Information Studies, and my 
area is library science.  We prepare students to go out and work as librarians, 
and this type of argument about the failure of programs to prepare students for 
their first job comes up again and again.

Some people the the profession want us to be a center for training.  Every few 
years, someone will beat the drum, saying that "library schools are teaching all 
of this theory, and we get the students and have to train them."

We see our role as educators, so we do teach them theory, and then they apply it 
through assignments and internships.  But the reality is that each workplace is 
different, so there is no way we could train a student to be ready to work on 
day one in any library or information position.  


It sounds like the same frustration is happening here - people in the industry 
want someone who, on day one, is ready to be dropped into a position and be 
fully functional in that particular job setting, and that's just not feasible.  
These folks want training for a specific job (and I can sympathize with that, 
but it's not what we do in higher education).

We are preparing students for a lifetime career, and not for a specific job.  
The concepts and theories will be a framework to support the individual as they 
move from place to place.  If all we did was focus on preparing people for a 
specific job, then they would struggle to move out of that job.  We are not 
focused on preparing people for just their first job.

What has happened in the library space is that the professional organization now 
has an accrediting procedure, so schools that wish to be accredited have to 
teach certain things and involve the profession in certain ways.  Most library 
positions require a degree from a school that has gotten this accreditation, so 
that is how engagement with accreditation is enforced.  








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