Game studies courses are proliferating across colleges and universities at the undergraduate as well as graduate level. Some classes are affiliated with game design programs while others are not. They are offered in a wide range of departments and disciplines, including media studies, communications, computer science, sociology, English, education, political science, and many others. The primary goal of such courses is not to teach game design skills, but instead to teach critical analysis skills as well as the history and context of digital games. This workshop will allow instructors of such courses to gather and engage in post-mortems of those class experiences, and troubleshoot best practices for course and assignment design.
DiGRA 2015 Pre-Conference Workshop
Organizers:
Mia Consalvo
Concordia University, Montreal, Canada
Christopher Paul
Seattle University, Seattle, USA
The aims of the workshop are twofold- it will both benefit pedagogy about games and, especially for faculty members who are among the only faculty at their institution studying games, provide a valuable resource for sharing and critiquing pedagogical practices. The session will be conducted on a drop-in basis, where any interested parties can come and learn and/or ask questions about pedagogy in game studies courses. Participants will be able to develop best practices on teaching game studies and on how to integrate game play into courses. Finally, the workshop will generate a repository (from those willing to share) of game studies courses currently being offered.
The workshop will also reserve time for discussion based on specific participant interests, such as discussion of best practices in teaching/learning strategies, and the place of MOOCs and other pedagogical innovations in game studies teaching and curriculums.
Planned activities
Upon completion, participants will be asked to write reactions to the workshop activities as teams, commenting on ideas and potential practices that arose from group discussion. Those documents, along with course syllabi that participants wish to provide will be posted online, and should provide a guide for those who were not able to attend the workshop.
More information about the workshop will be posted at
http://teachinggamestudies.wordpress.com/
To Participate
If you would like to participate in this workshop, please RSVP to us at mia.consalvo@concordia.ca<mailto:mia.consalvo@concordia.ca> by Friday, April 10, 2015
