LAST: Stumbling Blocks of Higher Education and the Second Bullet
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.
- Too much to teach
- The Computer Science Problem
- How does it fit in with the rest of college?
- Advanced topics
- Industry standards
Our third point is best understood when you teach gaming at a college. You can sometimes feel out on an island. You don’t feel like you and your program fit in any one area. It’s artsy, mathy, creative, logical, graphic, technological and more. What other department has that many and conflicting adjectives.
Game departments can be cut into pieces and placed into multiple departments, divisions or programs. This is not a good set up for quality control. Each part of gaming might be controlled by a different (department) chair that has different expectations than another. Or worse, all of the chairs might not even have any knowledge of gaming. Then, what do you do? Each piece of gaming might be treated with outcomes that don’t even apply to the field due to ignorance.
I know of one college that has game development but the art and programming students don’t even share a class until senior year. Design gets squished into development over a small period of time, and no one benefits from the diverse knowledge base. Another college just throws a couple of game programming courses at the end of the computer science program. It feels almost like an afterthought. Maybe they feel that it’s another thing to put on a student’s resume, and then they have an outside chance of a finding a career.
There also can be a big problem with traditional academic pursuits in that you won’t share students. All of my students take English and Math. On the flip side, it’s rare to see even one of those majors in my classes per semester. That can make for low class sizes that will jeopardize the future of the program. Many colleges won’t risk the loss of money in order to get these crossover English students. They tend to look at who is majoring in gaming and the gaming class sizes. If those numbers are low, the program is in trouble.
At my old community college, I traditionally had a hard time filling my 200 level classes (sophomore level.) That usually means that I had to teach extra classes so they didn’t fire me due to low overall enrollment. It also makes me, and other colleges wonder what to offer. I could cut one of my 200 level classes and pick up a traditional class (not in the gaming major) to get my overall teaching numbers up. Dropping that 200 level course might even increase my graduation rate and help me out indirectly.
The temptation is out there. However, dropping advanced classes wouldn’t help my students. As it is, many have a hard time bridging the gap between where they came from to industry level portfolios and abilities. They need these advanced topics. Learning Gantt charts, what an object is, how to make a simple animation (with little scripting) are all good, but it’s hard to find anyone who wants to hire people with just these skills. Companies tend to want someone with jaw dropping models, deep knowledge of a game engine expressed through something like a mod, published work, experience from a project that exists in consumer-land, etc.
There is a constant tug of war going on with advanced topics. It will be some time before colleges and universities get a grasp on them. As the industry emerges as a true, viable source of employment with a future, colleges will begin to assimilate a plan that is clear. Colleges and universities are also slow to move. They will lag a little behind the need.
NEXT: Stumbling Blocks of Higher Education #4
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