LAST: Good and Bad Lessons at Colleges
This is part of a series of same titled blogs that focus on the teaching of gaming above the high school level. As a professor who taught (and sometimes still teaches) gaming, I’ll share my perspective on the pros and cons. I’m going to try to go in depth on what to expect and what we shouldn’t. I also will answer common questions by students and prospective companies who wish to hire. I teach at community colleges in the United States, so my experience may differ from other parts of the world. Take my opinion for what it is: the most authoritative. No, just kidding, but I wouldn’t mind hearing any opinions for or against my own.
There are issues in teaching gaming. I believe the biggest are:
- Too much to teach
- The Computer Science Problem
- How does it fit in with the rest of college?
- Advanced topics
- Industry standards
Let’s address these in order for the next few blogs. In the first bullet, to make a game, you don’t have just one or two fields of study. Gaming encompasses the departments of Business, Art, Computer Science, Software Engineering, Physics, Mathematics, Music, Graphic Design and more. It is hard to address each of these needs in the flavor of gaming.
Take any of these departments and try to figure out how to handle the needed courses. For example, a professor from the music department can give great lessons on … music, but will the student get what they need for the industry? More over, if I make a gaming department do I make a class for music? Do I make more than one? Do I rely on the music department to offer one? Or, should they be directed to make one that will actually be applicable or useful to my students? After all of this, do I make the course(s) a requirement? An elective?
And, what if a student wants to come to my school to get into the field as a producer? Will I be able to offer enough cogent courses without having my department skew too much towards that type position? Most colleges pick an identity of what type of jobs for which they want to prepare their students. However, that approach leaves only benefits those students. The rest are out in the cold to try to find a college that handles other positions. With limited colleges teaching gaming, that is a problem. It isn’t like English where almost every college has that major.
With a plethora of needs to make a game, it is hard to cover all of the specific topics needed. We can try to get the other departments to help us out but they have their own agendas to satisfy their own majors. The alternative is to teach these things in house, but things get stretched thin fairly quick.
NEXT: Stumbling Blocks of Higher Education #2
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