Spring 2008: Workshop
I have decided to teach two sessions of the CI 498N: Making Video Game for Classroom Learning in the coming year. Apparently the tools are getting cheaper and cheaper, too. Neverwinter Nights is now selling only $15.00 (Amazon.com), and Neverwinter Nights 2 for $29.00. The expansion pack for NWN2, Mask of the Betrayer would be a needed buy because it now provide the modders with more models, and I believe: a waterfall!
I decided to forge ahead with the new game, instead of repeating last Summer’s class. Looking for resources and tutorial proved to be a little more troublesome than last year, because there is no ready-made tutorial that is suitable for the class. I ended up developing a new tutorial for the students, the learning and development experience was rather pleasant.
Summer 2007: Workshop
This Summer I taught the CI 498N: Video Game as Instructional Authoring Tool for a second time. (This is an upper classman to graduate level class.) Because Neverwinter Nights 2 is now available for just $29 at Wal-Mart, I decided to forge ahead with the new game, instead of repeating last Summer’s class. Looking for resources and tutorial proved to be a little more troublesome than last year, because there is no ready-made tutorial that is suitable for the class. I ended up developing a new tutorial for the students, the learning and development experience was rather pleasant. The students enjoyed the class, and on Showcase day, we even make the evening news on KFVS-12. Yay!
Fall 2006
In the Fall, I teach the advance game modding/research class. CI 551: Research and Design in Instructional Gaming. This is a graduate level class. In this class, we use one or two books as reader for discussion. Based on the readings, we examine in depth what constitutes a serious game, and how we may turn our game mod into one. The current textbooks are:
- Michael & Chen (2005): Serious Games - Games that Educate, Train and Inform
- Gibson, Aldrich & Prensky (2007): Games and Simulations in Online Learning
Summer 2006: Workshop
In the Summer I teach an Instructional Technology Workshop called CI 498N: Video Game as Instructional Authoring Tool. The main learning task for the class is to learn game modding using Neverwinter Nights 1. Typically we would plow through the tutorials for about two and a half week, played through the Top-5 winners of the 2005 NWN modules creation competition and eventually try to come up with an engaging story as a mod. I have conducted the class successfully with a group of school teachers and students with no programming background. We all liked the class because it is quite fun, and not overly daunting. The NWN Aurora Toolset is easy to learn, and we can do pretty much anything save the scripting. Almost everyone who attended the class was able to create a mod and showcase it as a final project.
