[game_edu] Brenda Braithwaite's game_edu rant at GDC

[Simon Etienne Rozner]

Admittedly I struggle along the same lines as Ian. Sitting down one on one has slowly become a common activity for me. I try to adress the problems I identify in the next class and program examples in class together with the students. This really only works in small groups though, less that 10 to 12.

The only consolation I have is that I see more and more the same  difficulties all the students have on a foundational level. That is being able to plan an implementation in regards to the quirks and difficulties the chosen plarforms have. We often work with Actionscript nowadays, but there are some quirks to it that are difficult to get students to understand by just explaining it. Such as precedence of code that is executed via multiple enter frame loops. How to structure your code accordingly and what is good practice abd what isn't so you don't get strage results is driving my students mad. I found no book that deals with that, and had to learn that myself the hard way. I cover it, but students still fall into the traps. It is like Ian said, not a thing where you can go and look at a gameFAQ equivalent.

I would love to find a way that makes the students lifes easier and my teaching more efficient by being able to avoid the endless one on one sessions.

On Mar 8, 2011, at 23:57, Ian Schreiber <ai864 at yahoo.com> wrote:


> I agree that it's "computational thinking" more than computer science which is key here. (And yes, designers should also understand something of art, audio, QA, etc., but design is most strongly linked to code since it is code that implements the design.) Maybe that's the key: how to teach computational thinking before you teach actual programming?

> 

> This is the problem I've run into whenever considering a game programming textbook or class. Learning programming is "hard fun" which means it is in danger of crossing the line to "frustrating to the point of giving up forever." If it were made into a game, it would be like an old-school puzzle-based adventure game, where you have to know what to do in order to proceed, and if you can't solve a given puzzle then you're stuck forever.

> 

> Except in a way, it's worse than adventure games, because you can't just look up the answer on GameFAQs. Even if I give you, say, a programming challenge that forces you to use 1d arrays... even if you "cheat" by looking up the correct source code to fulfill the requirements of that challenge, it won't really help you when we get to 2d arrays. You can't just memorize a puzzle solution, you have to really grok the concept.

> 

> The most success I've had in teaching programming, is when I am interacting with students directly one-on-one. There are a seemingly infinite number of ways that students can misconceptualize a programming concept, so I have to sit there with them and do some puzzle-solving of my own, figuring out where their reasoning is flawed and then draw them over to a better way of thinking about a problem. This is hard, it's time-consuming, and (most importantly) it doesn't scale. I can't put myself in a book or a blog post. So coming up with a learn-it-yourself programming resource is an unsolved problem to me. (Even Brenda, as much as she might like the programming book she's working through, has John there to help if she gets stuck.)

> 

> The more I think about it, I feel like computational thinking is a necessary 21st-century literacy skill, and that a student that reaches the college level without it is going to have a very hard time to begin with. Maybe the solution is to push this requirement down to the grade-school level, and start tightening admissions requirements accordingly. That doesn't solve the problem so much as it passes the buck to someone else, admittedly.

> 

> Has anyone else out there found a way around this when teaching programming, some method or resource that lets students get past the stuck-points of learning core programming concepts on their own without needing a human mentor to walk them through? If so, how did you do it?

> 

> - Ian

> 

> 

> From: Simon Etienne Rozner <infonaut at gameonaut.com>

> To: IGDA Game Education Listserv <game_edu at igda.org>

> Sent: Tue, March 8, 2011 6:02:11 AM

> Subject: Re: [game_edu] Brenda Braithwaite's game_edu rant at GDC

> 

> I think that as many here already agree as well, that a more then just fundamental understanding of programming is a very good thing for a game designer. A CS degree is don't think is a nessecity but at least a theoretical understanding of the things a computer scientist deals with on an every day basis is by all means useful information. I teach courses both for CS students and Game design students ( art as well as technical oriented degrees) ( see the courses for BAGD and BSGD on the Digipen website). In those courses I teach a programing class oriented for game designers. The focus is on understanding logical thought and implementation processes that are directly as well as indirectly relevant to game design. On top of that I try to help the students to develop a feeling of what is possible to code given constraibts of time, manpower and money( that one in theory, since we don't have actual money in the classroom). It should help them to understand how an inefficient desig

> n affects the production, how to go about changing it to something that yields the same result but can be accomplished faster and easier and gain at the same time important foundation programmig skills to be able to create their own prototypes and simple games.

> 

> Although I am not a programmer and come from an art background, understanding the limitations of the system i design on, the intricacies of code structures and logic flow of programs have been immensly valuable for me. I think it is a mistake for any aspiring gake designer or veteran to brush programing aside as unimportant and a waste of time. It is essential knowledge to our craft, but don't need to be computer scientists. We must well understand though what it is they do. On that note, you should also well understand what your artists do and everyone else on the team.

> 

> On Mar 8, 2011, at 18:45, Mike Reddy <Mike.Reddy at newport.ac.uk> wrote:

> 

> > I dabbled with a game programming summer course last year, and know that Ian Schreiber and I discussed him (us?) running a game programming summer course, building on his game design and game balance courses in previous years. Any designers reading this, or those who think that Brenda has a point, might consider setting aside a few hours a week for the Summer, if they want to dip into programming this year. Do you think that there would be interest in this?

> > 

> > Personally, I think that comments about systems thinking and the creativity of constraint are excellent enablers.

> > 

> > Mike

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