Teaching Game Studies 2016 Edition

Call for Participation

Workshop: Teaching Game Studies: from Beginner to Advanced Pedagogies

2 August 2016, DiGRA and FDG in Dundee

We are delighted to announce the next event in our series of workshops focusing on teaching game studies. Prior iterations have been held at past DiGRA and FDG conferences, and more than 100 participants have attended and taken part in a variety of activities. This workshop will be a half-day event, during the afternoon of August 2, 2016. It will include both open and closed sessions. Our open session will be available on a drop-in basis to anyone wishing to attend: no prior submission is required, and no advance notification is needed. For the closed sessions, we invite submissions based on the following criteria.

Submission Guidelines

For participation in the full workshop applicants need to include one of the following:

1. A completed syllabus for a course related to game studies and a short statement about what kind of feedback would be most useful to the teacher.  The statement about feedback could focus on what worked in the class and what didn’t. 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).

OR

2. Participants can submit a 500-750 word proposal for a potential assignment or activity for a game studies related course. The proposal should be as detailed as possible, including guidelines and learning outcomes or objectives.

Schedule

1.00-1.15 Welcome and Housekeeping

1.15-2.00 Syllabus review

2.00-2.45 Potential assignments review

2.45-3.00 Wrap up part one

3.00-3.15 Break

3.15-4.30 OPEN SESSION: Roundtable discussion on issues with teaching game studies

4.30-5.00 Finalize session and future plans

 

Deadlines

Submissions of syllabus and post-mortem are due 3 June 2016

Decision notification: 7 June 2016

Please email all submissions as a single PDF file to Mia Consalvo at mconsalvo@gmail.com

 

Teaching Game Studies: DiGRA 2015 Edition

At the DiGRA 2015 conference, we again held our workshop, spread over two sessions during the conference itself. More than forty people participated in the sessions, and we gathered more great ideas for how to teach game studies. We’ve compiled the notes from both sessions into a document, available here for download. Please feel free to circulate this report with other instructors, and let us know if you have other valuable ideas to share. Report of DiGRA TGS Workshop 2015

Teaching Game Studies: DiGRA 2015 Edition

All are welcome – no preregistration required.

Saturday, May 16, 2015

Session 1

11:15-11:30 Welcome & Introductions

11:30 – 12:30 Game Studies 101

You have been asked (or you volunteered) to teach a game studies course at your university, and you are the only one with the background and expertise to do so. This hour covers basic information to help you, including suggested readings, assignments, goals and objectives. It discusses how different disciplines and fields approach such a topic, and deals (if time allows) with broader questions of institution support such as library and lab requirements, space needs, and general pedagogical concerns.

12:30 – 1:00 You Have Died

This short session asks participants to share their most notable failures, gaps, and omissions from previous experiences – either as the teacher or the student. What did you try and how did it go wrong? What kinds of blunders can actually be useful in the classroom? What can we all learn from such experiences?

1:00 – 1:15 Closing out Session 1

Session wrap-up and exchange of contact information; syllabus exchange.

1:15 – 2:30    Break

Session 2

2:30 – 2:45 Welcome & Introductions

2:45 – 3:45 Crafting the perfect assignment

Participants will be asked to share assignments, including in game studies and game design that have worked particularly well. These can be both solo and group assignments, as well as creative and scholarly products. What were the learning goals and how were the projects/assignments assessed? What types of classes would such an assignment work well for?

3:45- 4:15 Open Discussion/Questions and Answers

This is a free block of time to deal with anything we’ve not fully addressed or to delve more deeply into a topic or two of particular interest to the group. It is also a great chance to develop some key take aways for the group as a whole.

4:15 – 4:30 Wrap-up

Note sharing, and discussion of future workshops, publications, etc. Soliciting people to form a working group to address these issues.

Led by Mia Consalvo & Christopher A. Paul

Call for participation!

Teaching Game Studies: DiGRA Edition
Sunday, August 3, 2014, 1:30-4:45pm
Organized by:
Mia Consalvo, Concordia University
Christopher Paul, Seattle University

This half-day workshop is a follow-up to the one held at the Foundations of Digital Games conference in April 2014. Following that workshop a report was released, including syllabi, course post-mortems and a synthesis of the discussion regarding challenges and opportunities related to teaching game studies courses. This workshop continues that discussion and focuses on the following:

*Sharing additional course experiences with new participants
*In-depth discussion of a variety of assignments and their structure
*Future projects or activities (creation of a network; special journal issue; book; more white-papers; etc.)
*Other topics as desired by participants

Participation is free and open to all DiGRA attendees. If you wish to attend, please email Christopher Paul (paulc@seattleu.edu) with the following information:
-Name
-Institution and department
-Teaching experience in game studies
-Your goals and interests in this workshop

Space is limited to 15 participants, so please RSVP by July 30, 2014 in order for us to plan the sessions accordingly.

Update: Teaching Game Studies: DiGRA Edition is coming!

Thanks to strong interest, we’ll be holding a follow up half-day workshop at the DiGRA 2014 conference in Snowbird, Utah on August 3. This is our tentative plan:

This half-day workshop continues activities begun at the Foundations of Digital Games conference in April 2014. Following that workshop a report was released, including syllabi, course post-mortems and a synthesis of the discussion regarding challenges and opportunities related to teaching game studies courses. This workshop continues that discussion and focuses on the following:

+Sharing additional course experiences with new participants

+In-depth discussion of a variety of assignments and their structure

+Future projects or activities (creation of a network; special journal issue; book; more white-papers; etc.)

+Other topics as desired by participants

Stay tuned for more information!

Teaching Game Studies Workshop: Our Final Report and Syllabi

In April 2014 we held our workshop, Teaching Game Studies, as part of the Foundations of Digital Games annual conference. Attendance was very good, and included those who had submitted work in advance as well as interested attendees from the larger conference. Discussion was spirited, and many, many suggestions and ideas were circulated. We took copious notes, and generated a report of the event. Today we’re pleased to release both the report of the workshop as well as the syllabi and post-mortems that our participants submitted in advance of the event. These documents are shared in the spirit of improving pedagogy in the area of game studies, which has often been overlooked in game development and design programs. But from our conversations, it is a lively, important and growing area to consider.

Please download and read our report, as well as the many excellent syllabi contained in this shared Dropbox folder. Our group is also interested in continuing this conversation, and so are in the process of setting up another event at the DiGRA 2014 Snowbird conference. If you are interested in taking part, or being part of this group more generally, please email me for more information.

Finally, I’d like to offer a big thank you to my co-organizers, Christopher Paul, Annika Waern, and Roger Altizer, who helped put together this fabulous workshop. And I’d also like to thank everyone who attended and shared their ideas.

 

Workshop attendees

We have confirmed our list of attendees for the workshop. They are:

Ian Schreiber

Kris Alexander

Will Robinson

Clara Fernandez Vara

Bob de Schutter

William Huber

Paolo Ruffino

Mia Consalvo

Roger Altizer

Annika Waern

Christian McCrea

We look forward to seeing you all very soon!

Deadline Extension

We’ve extended the deadline for submissions to Friday, December 20, 2013. Please send your syllabus + postmortem to Mia at the email address in the CFP. Thanks!

Call for Participation

Teaching Game Studies:

Course Post-Mortems & Advanced Syllabus Design

April 3-7, 2014 (during the Foundations of Digital Games conference)

Description
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.

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.

Deadlines

Submissions of syllabus and post-mortems 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