tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30766504.post498099725951226715..comments2024-01-15T03:36:11.777-05:00Comments on Teaching Game Design: The Four Difficulty Levels of AssignmentsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30766504.post-64357435013818191292012-12-31T19:46:22.714-05:002012-12-31T19:46:22.714-05:00Great question, Julien. I've seen several appr...Great question, Julien. I've seen several approaches.<br /><br />When I first started teaching, I actually didn't know what I wanted to see, so I kinda left it open - I can tell what "A" work is vs. "B" work, it's usually pretty obvious just from looking, but being able to justify it (or quantify it, or explain it to students) is a bit harder. While I'm sure my students were terrified, I would basically just assign grades and write a nice long set of comments to explain the strong and weak points of the project. This is NOT the best way to do things, because students only end up learning the boundaries and expectations in retrospect.<br /><br />With some experience, I started creating rubrics. If I'm a good enough game developer to know what a "good" project is, I should be able to say to students what I'm looking for, in one or more general weighted categories. This is generally what I do for most open-ended projects, especially when there are specific skills I want students to demonstrate. For example, in a class where I want them to learn rapid prototyping and iteration, I care less about whether the final game is "fun" then whether there's clear evidence that it has undergone several cycles of playtesting. This is evident by seeing how many really obvious stupid things I run into on initial playtest, the kinds of things that would be caught by ANY playtest group. For a "capstone" project where the students are supposed to actually put out a quality product, I'll be looking more heavily on whether the game is fun, whether the gameplay and UI are polished, whether the art and music styles are consistent and appropriate for the project, and so on.<br /><br />For classes where the process is more important than the project, having students keep an ongoing design journal or developer diary to document their process can be as large a part of the grade as the project itself. Additionally, if the student has to write a post-mortem where they analyze the strengths and weaknesses of their own project, the things they did right and wrong during their own process, and what they would change as their next steps if the project were to continue - that can also be used to compensate for a weak final project, if the student can demonstrate in writing that they know why their project sucks :). And as a bonus, you can take selections of previous-year student post-mortems and hand them to students in the next year, essentially saying "this is where your colleagues totally screwed up last year, see if you can avoid making the same n00b mistakes." Which they probably won't, but hey, forewarned and forearmed and all that.<br /><br />Hope that helps!Ian Schreiberhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03146360375570794401noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30766504.post-26179198720155157672012-12-31T16:07:19.365-05:002012-12-31T16:07:19.365-05:00Hey, I know this is an old post, so apologies for ...Hey, I know this is an old post, so apologies for raising the dead.<br /><br />I've just started teaching, and something I've been trying to figure out is: how exactly do you grade assignments that are as open-ended and focused on creativity as the ones you mention here? What I struggle with is trying to be fair and not-arbitrary, to have a system that isn't entirely subjective.<br /><br />As you mentioned, traditional/'easy' assignments have a right answer and are easy to grade. Beyond that, I've had some success with application/'medium' assignments (e.g. create a Rube Goldberg machine). However, from there on up things seem to get very subjective. Do you reward someone less or more for creating a simple game and doing it very well, or for aiming high, working hard, and coming up short? What about picking one skill (like 3D modeling and animations) to investigate in depth vs doing a little bit of everything? When designing a game, how do you compare between a student that applies an existing framework (say MDA) well, and a student that tries to come up with an entirely new framework?<br /><br />I know those are a lot of questions, so to kind of sum it all up: when an assignment is creative, open ended, and has a real chance of failure, what advice can you give in putting together a rubric, and then grading it?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02518790289337638734noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30766504.post-49035110536751809252011-10-25T11:52:12.353-04:002011-10-25T11:52:12.353-04:00We wanted to let you know that your blog was inclu...We wanted to let you know that your blog was included in our list of the top 40 video game design blogs of 2011. Our goal was to highlight blogs that students would find useful and interesting in their exploration of the field. You can view the entire list at http://www.thebestcolleges.org/top-video-game-design-blogs/.The Best Collegeshttp://www.thebestcolleges.orgnoreply@blogger.com