[game_edu] Annual Meeting at GDC - notes from the floor

[Bill Crosbie]

Greetings one and all,

As you might have known, the SIG annual meeting took place during GDC. Here
is a very quick summary from my recollections and notes from that day.

Meeting ran from 9:00-9:50 am - Thursday March 3

1)  new steering committee structure
Instead of having 3 members with one acting as the committee chair, we have
adopted a structure similar to other SIGs where Chris, Suzanne and I are
co-chairs of the sig. This should ease some of the back channel discussions
that were occurring and streamline communication.

2) Communication channels
A quick survey of the room found that not everyone in the room was aware of
this email list, the education sig page at IGDA, or the curriculum wiki.
Suzanne is going to be heading up efforts to streamline the communication
channels.

a) we are examining how to move the mailing list off of the old-school
system to Google groups. The rationale, easier for people to manage their
inclusion on the list and greater ability to search archive of past
conversations.

b) Due to some challenges with the main IGDA web site content management
system install all content is difficult to edit. At present the main SIG
site (http://www.igda.org/game-education) has old information. This is being
addressed, but will take time. More information will be forthcoming.

c) The IGDA wiki
http://wiki.igda.org/Game_Education_SIG/  - main SIG wiki
http://wiki.igda.org/Game_Education_SIG/Curriculum - Curriculum Framework
http://wiki.igda.org/Curriculum_Knowledge_Base       - Syllabi and program
descriptions

These areas have not been touched since 2008. An effort will be made to
archive projects that are not currently active and to highlight current
initiatives.

Also, we hope that you will consider contributing descriptions of your
program and your syllabi to the list so that we can all benefit from the
community.


3) Curriculum Framework
I (Bill) will be the touchpoint on the steering committee for the next
revision of the Curriculum framework.

The industry has evolved since the last draft was published in 2008 and
there are many more game development programs around the world than there
were 3 years ago. When Monica McGill wrote her dissertation on the
curriculum planning process in the US and the UK, she learned that a large
number of programs were unaware of our framework or found our framework
'less actionable' or less desirable than the ACM curriculum framework. This
is of concern because game development is clearly more than computer
science/engineering. Fortunately, the structure of the ACM framework
provides a good model for us to consider in explaining our curriculum.

With that in mind, I suggested some questions for the group to consider -
what new topics need to be added to existing divisions of the curriculum?
What areas require stronger examples and greater clarity? Can any elements
be removed?

A call for volunteers will be going out by mid-April with the goal of having
a first draft ready for review at this year's leadership forum.

4) Student project database -
Suzanne presented Chris Swain's idea to the group of putting together a
database of student projects to help connect students at one institution
with students as a different institution to fill gaps in project teams. This
item sparked a lively discussion.

Some of the comments were:

   - If we build it students will avoid it.
   - It needs to be developed by students.
   - If students want to make this happen, they will find their own way to
   make it happen.
   - Are there successful models from the industry?  :- several people
   suggested that the modding community makes it work.
   - What about collaborations where different institutions assign different
   IP rights (student owns work vs institution owns work.)
   - Student groups without guidance are unstable
      - possible to pair with industry mentor?
      - fight the 20 student WoW relaunch tendency
   - This could be useful after they graduate as a 'soft incubator'
   - don't make portal, instead give framework of what works or doesn't work
      - videos on project management
      - let students figure it out
   - Student groups might be ideal to do this

Members from Design3.com indicated that one component on their community
site is for student groups.

Lee Sheldon set up a system when at IU but was solely for use campus to
campus within the IU system. Suggestion was made for Lee and Chris to
discuss the similariteis between the proposed system and the one
implemented.

Suggestion made that this could be useful for indie groups with game idea,
but harder to flesh out for in class work (cross referenced the Education
summit section on institutional collaboration).

Question was raised - how can we do this on an institutional level?

   - schools looking for connections
   - suggestion - set up page on
Game_Education_SIG<http://wiki.igda.org/Game_Education_SIG/>wiki
   - Comment - the summit session was filled with collaborations backed by
   funding, grants, large projects (could we do it without financial
   incentive?)
   - Comment - issues with timing - not everyone is on similar schedules.
   - At Univ. Gotland (Sweden) - summer projects can earn credit if
   demonstrably course related


The meeting ended by going around the room and introducing ourselves to one
another so that we could spot commonalities or potential partners among the
attendees.


Suzanne wrapped the meeting by announcing a party that evening hosted by
Unity, The meeting was then adjourned.

We want to extend a huge thank you to Unity for hosting the together on
Thursday night.  I think I speak for everyone present when I say that the
event was a remarkable success.


Bill Crosbie for the IGDA Education SIG
-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
bill crosbie
http://about.me/bcrosbie/bio

It is humbling almost to the point of despair to discover that 15 dozen
screenfuls of ponderous commentary produced by a small liberal-arts faculty
worth of beardy gamer geeks can, with almost zero loss of insight, be
reduced to the three panels of a Penny Arcade cartoon.
~ Julian Dibbell quoted in Wired (September 2007)
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