We will work together this semester to create an original educational video game in collaboration with The Indianapolis Children's Museum. This will require an immersion in game design, educational theory, and software production in a collaborative environment: you will play to your strengths while also stretching your boundaries.
Creating an original video game in fifteen weeks is ambitious, to say the least. You are expected to commit 18 hours of effort per week to the project, the majority of which will be in our dedicated studio space of RB368.
We will begin the semester with a week of bootstrapping activities. We will proceed into an iterative and incremental development cycle, following best practices of agile software development.
As an academic experience, our inquiry will be guided be the following essential questions.
The Seven Properties of Highly Successful Projects guide our interactions this semester, regardless of the methodological details we agree upon. In summary, these are:
Students will have a significant voice in the structure of the semester. The evaluation plan below assumes that we follow my recommended format. We will collaboratively adjust the evaluation plan in case a different structure is used.
At the end of each iteration, each student is expected to write a personal reflection—an essay that frames one or more of the essential questions within the context of the previous few weeks' efforts. If you are a Computer Science major earning CS315 or CS345 credit, at least two of these essays must correspond to themes of game programming or human-computer interaction, respectively. The essays will be graded based on clarity of thought and expression. It takes time to compose a cogent essay, and this definitely counts as “work&quo; time toward your obligation; you should budget your weekly hours accordingly.
I will also give each student a commitment score at the end of each iteration. This score reflects how I have observed you keeping your commitment to the methodology.
Essays grades and commitment scores will be given using my triage grading scheme, weighting these two components equally. Your final grade then will be computing by summing the points earned over each iteration. For example, assuming seven iterations, then you can earn a total of 6×7=42 points, so using the table with T=42 determines the letter grade cutoffs. Put another way, focus on keeping your commitments to the team and, after each iteration, writing a high-quality reflection essay: do this, and everything else will fall into place.
The instructor may access email through services not affiliated with the University. Please note that such messages necessarily pass through the campus firewall in an unencrypted format, and they may be stored on servers not owned or managed by Ball State University. It is therefore advisable to restrict confidential information to office hours or appointments.
Students and faculty are bound by the Student Academic Ethics Policy of the Code of Student Rights and Responsibilities.
It behooves you to be aware of fundamentals of copyright law and the university's intellectual property policies for student-created work.
If you need adaptations or accomodations because of a disability, if you have emergency medical information to share with the instructor, or if you need special arrangements in case the building must be evacuated, please make an appointment as soon as possible.