Done Teaching
So I didn't post too much about my teaching experience as I was going along. This was mostly due to the work that went into each class preparation.
So while teaching was a great experience, I doubt I will do it again anytime soon. While I enjoyed teaching it was just too much work outside of my job.
Here are some random thoughts, things I did to prepare myself, etc.
Data Collection
First I collected as much data as I could. This first just came in the form of all the things I had been thinking about. I had often thought, "If I taught a class I would talk about this and that." I wrote all that stuff down in a big brainstorm document (I make a doc like this for every project I work on) that I would later organize.
Then I went online to see if I could find what other structures teachers were using for game design classes. I found very little. Almost nothing really. Everything I found online was very broad and applied to large console projects.
Data Organization
I found some excellent resources. The best being the IGDA curriculum outline. This gave me a great base of how to organize the class. The first couple of lectures were in my head fully formed so they were easy to get done. I just had to get all my brainstorm ideas under the right headers.
The Plan
My initial idea was to give the students a critique exercise to gauge their current understanding of game design. I would then have a couple lectures on game design and have them write another critique where they could use their new found knowledge.
Then I would move onto the process of game design. Granted this would be MY process but I would emphasize it’s about finding your best inspiration, creative outlets, etc. and then trying to organize and document your ideas a bit.
Then I would move onto developing ideas & prototyping (which go hand in hand for me), getting something playable fast and incrementing the design.
From here I would focus on numerous game design exercises. I had ideas worked up for: free designs, limited designs (designing with limited inputs/actions, designing to themes, designing to an activity conceit) group designs, balance exercises, theme changes of existing games, etc.
Students would then work on their original game design ideas using prototyping as a tool of the design process. I would show them how to document their games with small 1 sheet documents and a light game design doc.
The Shock
The students’ programming level was not where I thought it would be. I could not execute “the plan.” The other big shock is that when I asked, “Who wants to be a game designer?” not one student raised their hand. I thought asking that of college students was liking asking kindergarteners, “Who wants to be an astronaut?”
A bit of an overhaul was in order.
The Plan 2
So I reworked the plan to be half lecture and half programming instruction. I lost nearly all of my game design activities.
I use lots of fast (and bad) code to prototype quickly in Flash. I thought I would familiarize the students with some core game programming methods (moving sprites, collision, autonomous agents, etc.) and give them some code to get these tools working quickly.
The Execution
The first 80% of the class was easy to prepare for. My initial lectures had been in mind and there was lots of code to show the students that fit their skill level.
Students seemed to really enjoy coding and seeing things working quickly. We did key/mouse capturing, controlling sprites, shooting bullets, collision detection, platforming and a few other random things. After the students had a bit of a base and had their game ideas in mind I showed them some code for polishing up their games: particle effects, parallax scrolling, text effects, save/load and custom cursors. I had 24 programming demos in all.
The last few lectures I was kind of burned out. I had a hard time finishing them up. The last 2 lectures were about balance and player feedback. Here articles on Gamasutra and my notes from GDC lectures helped me out.
The Final Product
I worked with some promising students with varied interests and abilities. Some of these students really let their skills shine in their work. The students produced some really nice work, some outstanding and some that could have been better but overall very impressive.
Looking back I really wished I had recorded the lectures. The first few lectures I was very nervous and I barely remember what I was saying.
The most taxing bit was using PowerPoint to set up slides for my lectures and using Excel for my grade tracking. The MS Office suite eludes me.
So while teaching was a great experience, I doubt I will do it again anytime soon. While I enjoyed teaching it was just too much work outside of my job.
Here are some random thoughts, things I did to prepare myself, etc.
Data Collection
First I collected as much data as I could. This first just came in the form of all the things I had been thinking about. I had often thought, "If I taught a class I would talk about this and that." I wrote all that stuff down in a big brainstorm document (I make a doc like this for every project I work on) that I would later organize.
Then I went online to see if I could find what other structures teachers were using for game design classes. I found very little. Almost nothing really. Everything I found online was very broad and applied to large console projects.
Data Organization
I found some excellent resources. The best being the IGDA curriculum outline. This gave me a great base of how to organize the class. The first couple of lectures were in my head fully formed so they were easy to get done. I just had to get all my brainstorm ideas under the right headers.
The Plan
My initial idea was to give the students a critique exercise to gauge their current understanding of game design. I would then have a couple lectures on game design and have them write another critique where they could use their new found knowledge.
Then I would move onto the process of game design. Granted this would be MY process but I would emphasize it’s about finding your best inspiration, creative outlets, etc. and then trying to organize and document your ideas a bit.
Then I would move onto developing ideas & prototyping (which go hand in hand for me), getting something playable fast and incrementing the design.
From here I would focus on numerous game design exercises. I had ideas worked up for: free designs, limited designs (designing with limited inputs/actions, designing to themes, designing to an activity conceit) group designs, balance exercises, theme changes of existing games, etc.
Students would then work on their original game design ideas using prototyping as a tool of the design process. I would show them how to document their games with small 1 sheet documents and a light game design doc.
The Shock
The students’ programming level was not where I thought it would be. I could not execute “the plan.” The other big shock is that when I asked, “Who wants to be a game designer?” not one student raised their hand. I thought asking that of college students was liking asking kindergarteners, “Who wants to be an astronaut?”
A bit of an overhaul was in order.
The Plan 2
So I reworked the plan to be half lecture and half programming instruction. I lost nearly all of my game design activities.
I use lots of fast (and bad) code to prototype quickly in Flash. I thought I would familiarize the students with some core game programming methods (moving sprites, collision, autonomous agents, etc.) and give them some code to get these tools working quickly.
The Execution
The first 80% of the class was easy to prepare for. My initial lectures had been in mind and there was lots of code to show the students that fit their skill level.
Students seemed to really enjoy coding and seeing things working quickly. We did key/mouse capturing, controlling sprites, shooting bullets, collision detection, platforming and a few other random things. After the students had a bit of a base and had their game ideas in mind I showed them some code for polishing up their games: particle effects, parallax scrolling, text effects, save/load and custom cursors. I had 24 programming demos in all.
The last few lectures I was kind of burned out. I had a hard time finishing them up. The last 2 lectures were about balance and player feedback. Here articles on Gamasutra and my notes from GDC lectures helped me out.
The Final Product
I worked with some promising students with varied interests and abilities. Some of these students really let their skills shine in their work. The students produced some really nice work, some outstanding and some that could have been better but overall very impressive.
Looking back I really wished I had recorded the lectures. The first few lectures I was very nervous and I barely remember what I was saying.
The most taxing bit was using PowerPoint to set up slides for my lectures and using Excel for my grade tracking. The MS Office suite eludes me.
posted by Brad Merritt at 5:29 PM
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