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.
Teaching Game Studies: Course Post-Mortems & Advanced Syllabus Design
April 3-7, 2014 (during the Foundations of Digital Games conference)
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. Participants will gain access to a range of syllabi for and example assignments from game studies courses currently being taught. They will also obtain feedback on their own syllabi, including help with assignments, reading selections and overall course goals. 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
All accepted submissions will be shared with workshop participants in advance, in order to preserve workshop time for in-depth discussions and planning.
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 revised 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.
Organizers
Mia Consalvo
Christopher A. Paul
Annika Waern
Roger Altizer
Submission Guidelines
Submissions must include the following two components or will not be considered:
1. A completed syllabus for a course related to game studies. Submissions may also include relevant assignments (Please note: courses should NOT focus on game design or on development. While creating a game may be one element of a game studies course it should not be the central focus of the course).
2. Participants must also submit a 500-750 word post-mortem of the class experience. Post- mortems should critically evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the course experience. While concrete solutions to course problems are not required, the post-mortem should address questions about how to improve the course, or what questions have arisen about future iterations of the course.
Participants must have taught the course at least once, indicating in their submission when it has most recently been taught.
Participation will be limited to no more than 20 individuals in order to ensure time for critique and discussion of each person’s syllabi and ideas in the appropriate depth.
More information about the workshop can be found at http://teachinggamestudies.wordpress.com/
Deadlines
Submissions of syllabus and post-mortem are due December 13, 2013
Decision notification: January 10, 2014
Please email all submissions as a single PDF file to Mia Consalvo at mconsalvo@gmail.com