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

[Tamara Peyton]

I agree with Ian. Yes, it is right to expect university graduates to
have learned how to learn. The problem is, that isn't often how most
of those undergrad courses are approached by either the faculty
teaching them or the students sitting through them.

One of the problems is the way the theoretical background is imparted
to students. They are taught all kinds of theory from all sorts of
disciplines, and they get taught the "Who, what, How" stuff very well,
but rarely are they taught the "why".... they don't know WHY they are
learning that theory. It seems to be assumed that the students will
make the 'why do I need to know this?" connection on their own and
extrapolate it out to the world of today. It's all about relevance,
something colleges seem better at than universities IMO.

Yet, in the first few years of a university undergrad's life, they are
bombarded with information and theory for a wide range of disciplines.
If the relevance of the theory makes sense to them, they will learn it
and they'll start to think of how to make connections between all that
theory stuff. But I'd argue that they rarely do this unguided. Unless
taught otherwise, the "why" gets answered with a rather pedantic
"cause you need it to pass the course" or "cause it's canon in the
social sciences". The relevance of it often doesn't move beyond that.
Consequently, they learn how to regurgitate but aren't necessarily
learning how to learn. So then you find them out on the marketplace
saying that they 'know" stuff, but they aren't so good at figuring out
how to put the stuff they know into action, or extrapolate it out to
other areas of professional life.

Tamara

On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 10:02 AM, Ian Schreiber <ai864 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> 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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-- 
Tamara Peyton (tpeyton at yorku.ca)
PhD Student - Communications & Culture
York University - Toronto, ON CANADA
http://www.tamarapeyton.com