Wednesday, October 18, 2017

QUT - Evolving one's Pedagogy

Since coming back to work at QUT, I have worked hard to evolve my teaching pedagogy further to make the learning processes I employ as efficient and worthwhile for my students as possible. Perhaps inspired by events at my previous employment, a place that emphasized the concept somewhat ridiculously (to it's own detriment), I have noticed gaps in the current curriculum offered at QUT that I feel I am capable of addressing in my own way.

Over the course of 2017, this evolution has come in several forms. First and foremost, I have returned to developing Unity game/genre specific tutorials for preliminary Unity units (e.g. IGB100 - Game Studio 1) taught at QUT. These units line up with other units running alongside the curriculum that I do not directly teach into, with the idea being that students can comfortably walk into these video tutorials with some prior knowledge of the software. The videos are similar to work I undertook several years ago (2013), from which I won a Vice Chancellor's Performance Award for significant contribution to University teaching. Developing them requires careful pre-planning and actual game production, often following a script and scheduling of tasks. One cannot simply wing it and hope that what is recorded is a timely and efficient production.



In addition to this, I have also put considerable effort into the assignment bases I use for more advanced scripting units. In particular, IGB383 - AI for Games is a unit I spent a great deal of time reworking the workshops and assignments for. The assignments themselves originate from semi-complete mini-games that I developed from scratch, complete with working mechanics, artificial intelligence and dynamic environments. I believe putting the effort into these works gives students the opportunity to focus on what is important (in this case, implementation of game AI) but also a platform for emulating game play elements in other subjects. Sometimes learning via example is the only way you can approach a topic, and giving students a smorgasbord of mechanics to harvest and evaluate is often beneficial.



Finally, I have undertaken an additional development task, producing globally applicable, degree wide videos regarding game design and implementation. These videos tackle not just technical Unity/C# topics, but project management and development life-cycle skills as well. It also affords me the opportunity to discuss certain topics which I consider to be very important game design skills and knowledge that are either taught degree wide or not necessarily covered at all during study at QUT. Some of these videos have been an absolute pleasure to make, especially ones where I can communicate some of the more nuanced aspects of game design. I hope to expand on this library, discussing source control, advanced game mechanics and scripting as well as more exploratory topics regarding modern day games.



Overall I have been rather enjoying my teaching run at QUT and hope I am kept on board to continue my work. I still have so much to do and many improvements to make regarding the evolution of my pedagogy.