Art and Design Commons^™

Many information technology educators have worked in recent years to develop courses to attract students to the field. As faculty achieve success with technical courses designed to be appeal to a broad audience, it can be hard to maintain the initial excitement particularly as multiple sections of the courses are taught on a continuing basis. In this article we describe a project that added peer evaluation to an assessment in a game design course with a large non-major audience. While controversial, peer evaluation has shown some promise in motivating students to work harder and in improving certain key skills. Consistent …

We describe an approach to projects used in game development courses that supports learning individual skills while also developing team skills. Early assignments focus on developing individual skills in coding and content creation, and when those skills are honed, students form teams to work on a larger and more complex game. Classes that use a hybrid approach, that is individual projects that build toward a large group project, allow students to solidly learn game development skills required of gaming graduates and yet stimulate creativity and challenge students to move beyond their comfort zone. 

The School of Computer Science, Telecommunications, and Information Systems (CTI) is a technologically-focused college within DePaul University. While DePaul CTI has a large number of technical degree programs, DePaul University is a liberal arts institution and one that is increasingly focused on improving the writing skills of its students. It can be difficult to create courses that cover necessary technical material while requiring writing as a major part of the assessments. In this paper we discuss GAM 224: Introduction to Game Design, a required course in one of the specialized degree programs at DePaul CTI that involves writing in a …