Assignments & Assessment
Assignments for this course are divided into the following 3 categories:
- Individual Intellectual Productions (25%)
- Video Game Fieldnote Assignment (20%)
- Collaborative Final Project (30%), Group Fullerton Exercise, (5%), Project Proposal (10%), Final Project Presentation (Synchronous) (5%) & Individual Reflection/Write up (5%)
Unless clearly indicated, your job is to choose 5 out of the 8 activities to complete for your intellectual productions. Those are required to be posted to your own website that you create and share with the course instructors via Slack. 2 of these are required (1 and 8). When you post a new assignment, your job is to let us know that the update is there via Slack. All assignments are due by the end of day (11:59pm PDT) on the dates provided below.
Due date for IP 1 (IP 1, required) is: January 22nd, 2023
Late assignments will be accepted, if and only if you communicate your need for additional time with the course instructors.
Due date for IP 2 (free choice between IPs 2-7) is: January 29nd, 2023
Late assignments will be accepted, if and only if you communicate your need for additional time with the course instructors.
Due date for IP 3 (IP 8, required) is: February 5th, 2023
Late assignments will be accepted, if and only if you communicate your need for additional time with the course instructors.
Due date for IP 4 (free choice between IPs 2-7) is: February 12th, 2023
Late assignments will be accepted, if and only if you communicate your need for additional time with the course instructors.
Due date for IP 5 (free choice between IPs 2-7) is: February 26th, 2023
Late assignments will be accepted, if and only if you communicate your need for additional time with the course instructors.
All IPs are to be posted to your individual website and the link sent to course instructors via Slack.
There are 5 IP’s required, each 5%. Marks are assigned on this basis:
1= “Check minus” (Completion of the assigned task, with minimal substance/quality, and little or no evidence of significant engagement with readings.)
3= “Check” (Satisfactory. The task is capably completed, and readings have been engaged with meaningfully and applied to the question/s set.)
5= “Check plus” (Outstanding work, polished presentation, creative/innovative, whether intellectually, technically and/or aesthetically, readings deeply engaged and interrogated to critically illuminate the question/s addressed.)
As for gradations, for example, ‘4’ means the work is very good and is close to “A” range; ‘2’ indicates the work is below expectations. If you are in doubt about how any IP has been marked, please just ask for clarification.
If you wish to revise and resubmit an IP for which you have received 3 or below, you have a week within which to do that.
This assignment entails playing a game solo and taking notes, then watching someone online play the same game via Twitch or YouTube, taking notes as well. As this is a bit more elaborate assignment, please see instructions below. Your job is to act as a researcher, taking notes and figuring out what you are noticing while you play, why that is significant, watch another play the same game, and also figuring out what is significant.
Once you have done the 3 field note pieces (NO WORD LIMIT), the final “bridge” is to put all that together in an analytical and summative “case study” of the game that should be no more than 1000 words (that makes 4 pieces in total!). Make sure you make careful and direct connections to the readings where possible. (NOTE: There is a form for this, but if you are finding editing difficult, just copy and paste it into whatever text editing document you use to clean it up for submission).
Instructions and PDF form for the field notes are here.
Due date for this assignment is March 12th, 2023. No late assignments will be accepted unless you have negotiated a later submission date with the instructors. You can post your field notes to your website and/or send via Slack to instructors (if you are having trouble uploading it to your own website).
This assignment is to be posted to your individual website and sent to course instructors via Slack.
3. Collaborative Final Project – 55% – (30% for game + 5% for Fullerton group activity and 10% for group proposal + 5% for Synchronous Presentation +5% Individual Reflection)
In a small (no more than 4) group of your choice, the final project is to design a digital game. The type/style of game is wide open and your choice
Part 1 of the assignment is to submit the group work from Tracy Fullerton’s Game Design Workshop Chapter 6 (Chapter 6 here). What are you going to do? Working in your game group, and as best you can together do the exercises in Chapter 6 — you can skip 3 of them — but make sure you do this as a GROUP and submit as a group (5 points). DUE: Feb. 19, 2023. (5%).
Part 2 of the assignment is to take that work of part 1 into your brainstorming for the videogame that you will design, creating a proposal, in the form of a design document (5 points), with reference to Fullerton’s first three chapters — this is a GROUP activity. This example template should get you started, and you can add in other elements you think are important. No more than 1000-1500 words, plus images if you want. Due: March 5, 2023. (10%).
Part 3 is to collaboratively design a game using any of the game design tools available: Twine, RPG Maker, GameMaker, Unity or Construct 3, G-Develop, or similar, but NO scratch projects will be considered. If you choose to create an analog game, you have to design, and make available in digital form, all playable elements, and there must be an accompanying rule sheet + video that demonstrates gameplay. This is your final project. The game can be anything you like on any topic you can imagine; it need not be curriculum-based, but it needs to be demonstrably ‘educational’. You can self-select into groups of no more than 4 people. Presentations of your groups’ ‘proof of concept’ game will happen the week of April 3, 2023. (30%).
You will “submit” this assignment synchronously in your final project groups using Zoom DATE TBD – Week of April 3rd, 2023 (5%).
Part 4: Individual Reflection – here you reflect on the game design process, what worked, what didn’t work, what did you learn, what would you do differently? And connect your process to the course readings where possible!. 1000 words. (Due April 9, 2022). (5%)
Expectations for the presentation are as follows and not necessarily in this order — you can choose how you want to present this: 1) you show us your game/demo it; 2) you describe your design process and specify each group member’s contributions; 3) each group member contributes equally (as much as possible) to speaking time re: presentation – in other words, make sure you divide up speaking roles; 4) you outline challenges and opportunities, and identify what was new learning for each member; 5) in as specific terms as possible, talk about your purposes in creating this game and its intended uses; 6) indicate what you would change if you were to do this project again.
More details on expectations are here.