Does anyone else want to chime in here?

All that means a lot coming from a high school dropout. Don't respond if you have nothing intelligent to contribute. Thank you!

Does anyone else want to chime in here?

Yes.

The problems with asking us how to structure your class is:

- Most of us are not teachers; we're mostly professionals and hobbyists. Our teaching is limited to sharing unstructured, gory implementation details. To us, there is no point if the knowledge we share is nebulous and unusable in a real-world setting.

- Your course is not something that most of us would be interested in taking ourselves, so we're similarly not very motivated to help. When you say you aren't interested in video games except as an artistic medium, likewise we're interested in education but not this particular implementation of it.

- Game developers constantly struggle to estimate the time it takes for us to get OUR work done, and it's incredibly hard. In some ways, game development is the very essence of doing something for the first time, every time. There is no possible way we can estimate the time a different person will take to do something.


My suggestion, since I don't know your teaching style, is to break the problem down like any other project where everything starts as an unknown. You're not that different from us when it comes to doing something for the first time, anyway:

- Determine the dependencies between topics.
- Begin with a quick investigation of each topic.
- Determine which topics and details are "critical path" (i.e. the stuff you NEED to teach).
- Leave everything else on standby, and attempt it only if you find out that you are ahead of schedule (being ahead of schedule basically never happens in game development, but I can't say what your course will hold).
- Work on (teach) topics in the order governed by the dependencies.

None of us is going to teach your class for you. You're the teacher, you've chosen the topic, it is your responsibility to know how to do this. We expect people who do a job to be good at that job; We expect you to be good at teaching.

Do not be the one that reinforces the derogatory statement, "those who can do, those who cannot teach." Nobody wants that.

You are misunderstanding. I am not asking how to structure my class- at least I don't mean to. I am a master teacher at this point, but taking on a subject that's on the far reaches of my specialty, the visual arts. I was interested to know how some of you see certain concepts lining up and/or building on each other given the general plan I've laid out for what I want to teach.

You're welcome. Sorry I have no valid input because I have a GED instead of a diploma... I wish I'd have stayed in High school and had great, knowledgeable dynamic teachers who prepare amazing lesson plans that truly show me how science and art mix into game design like yourself. Maybe then I'd know a thing or 2 about game design and implementing productive socially aware games that change the form of representation in genres with historically aware art that approaches subjects from a social justice perspective. That's exactly what the market's craving right now.

The market is irrelevant to my concerns by the way.

Question: How long will that take?

117 hours. 156 lessons of a minimum of 45 minutes. The final week for presentation/grading.

Culminating project will be redesigning an existing game (or game type) to incorporate a social justice approach. I don't care for video games in general but I think it would be good to teach how to use them constructively, as opposed to simply as entertainment. So rather than silly things or violent games, they can make games that have personal relevance to events in their lives.

Question: Would they have the skills?

No. You will need to add a 'discreet' unit of "Creative Writing".

As far as character design I just want to have students create their drawn characters in 3d. Is that too much?

Varies according to level of detail.

Will they be able to easily put a scanned drawing into Game Maker?

Yes. Will they have access to a scanner?

Would it be difficult to change an existing game into one with a student-centered theme? Would it require coding?

Yes, it would be difficult.
Yes, it would require coding.

I like your idea of teams designing levels. How would that all be put together technically?

That is a question better asked in the "Level Design" forum.

Question: How best to connect the first and second unit? What concepts might be carried over?

I am unable to answer. Please clarify the question.

Video Game aesthetics

Learning forms of representation (connects to character design) and something about genre or types of games and their formulas, narrative and conceptual. Also the history of video games and how science and art mix so that forms of representation change over time.

Question: Where do I bring this in?

I'd start with "Video Game Aesthetics".

Does this become a discreet unit or do I pull it through the whole course as an underlying study?

Both.

-

Did you check out the Independent Games Festival website for examples of creative art in games? Look for the "Finalists & Winners" link.

Sorry, there used to be a selective quote tab where I could pull out specific quotes and respond. If anyone knows what happened to it please let me know.

I agree about kids having to do some creative writing to redesign a game with a social justice theme. That's somewhere that I can introduce storyboards (more art!)

They will have access to a scanner. Can their character design on paper just be turned into a sprite and imported into Game Maker?

What I mean about carrying concepts from game design (table top) to aesthetics is how might they be related conceptually. Someone earlier also mentioned that only after having designed a fairly sophisticated video game would students be able to incorporate concepts learned from the table top games in the game design unit. Would that mean those concepts are useless to teach? Could they be applied over the course of the different units?

Sorry, there used to be a selective quote tab where I could pull out specific quotes and respond. If anyone knows what happened to it please let me know.

Sorry, there used to be a selective quote tab where I could pull out specific quotes and respond. If anyone knows what happened to it please let me know.

It wasn't part of the default IPS software the site uses, it was some after-market customization. It probably got removed, accidentally or intentionally (due to incompatibilities) when the staff last updated the site software. There's a thread already in the Comments, Suggestions and Ideas forum.

Thanks