Projects and Portfolios — An Educator's Reflections on the Summative Assessments in a Game Programming Course
Article No.: 11, Pages 1 - 8
Abstract
This paper describes the assessments in a third-year undergraduate Game Programming elective course. Three summative assessments are conducted throughout the semester: an Individual Game Project, a Team Game Project, and a Personal Portfolio. Throughout the course, learners develop a variety of formative artefacts that build towards their individual game, and then are further extended collaboratively to develop their team game. Artefacts generated by learners are also added to their Personal Portfolio, which is designed to target game industry employment opportunities. We provide critical reflection on the implementation of the assessments, and discuss some of the challenges. We share our insights to assist educators wanting to explore authentic game industry-style assessment.
References
[1]
Gonçalo Amador and Abel Gomes. 2016. A Video Games Technologies Course: Teaching, Learning, and Research. In EG 2016 - Education Papers. The Eurographics Association.
[2]
Lawrence Argent, Bill Depper, Rafael Fajardo, Sarah Gjertson, Scott Leutenegger, Mario Lopez, and Jeff Rutenbeck. 2006. Building a Game Development Program. Computer 39, 6 (2006), 52–60.
[3]
Maya Ashizumi-Munn. 2023. //mayapapaya. https://7473fb9c-ffea-4e02-a3be-449c13ea2cc3.repl.co/. [Accessed 22-Sept-2023].
[4]
Erik Bethke. 2003. Game Development and Production. Wordware Publishing, Inc.
[5]
Michael David Black. 2016. Seven Semesters of Android Game Programming in CS2. In Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (Arequipa, Peru) (ITiCSE ’16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 5–10.
[6]
Daniel C. Cliburn and Susan M. Miller. 2008. What Makes a "Good" Game Programming Assignment? Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges 23, 4 (2008), 201–207.
[7]
Paul Gestwicki and Fu-Shing Sun. 2008. Teaching Design Patterns Through Computer Game Development. J. Educ. Resour. Comput. 8, 1, Article 2 (mar 2008), 22 pages.
[8]
James Hannam. 2024. James Hannam. https://jamesahannam.wixsite.com/portfolio. [Accessed 22-Jan-2024].
[9]
Steffan Hooper, Burkhard C. Wünsche, Andrew Luxton-Reilly, Paul Denny, and Tony Haoran Feng. 2024a. Advancing Automated Assessment Tools — Opportunities for Innovations in Upper-level Computing Courses: A Position Paper. In Proceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 1 (Portland, OR, USA) (SIGCSE 2024). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 519–525.
[10]
Steffan Hooper, Burkhard C. Wünsche, Paul Denny, and Andrew Luxton-Reilly. 2024b. Teaching Game Programming in an Upper-level Computing Course Through the Development of a C++ Framework and Middleware. In Eurographics 2024 - Education Papers, Beatriz Sousa Santos and Eike Anderson (Eds.). The Eurographics Association.
[11]
IGDA. 2014. IGDA Game Crediting Guide 9.2. Available at https://igda-website.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/21170013/IGDA_Game_Crediting_Guide_Draft_9-2-EN-2014.pdf.
[12]
IGDA. 2023. IGDA Game Crediting Guide 10.1. Available at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jhs6vG3Qieu4tjJ6ImqhZ21_pMHkDLxM/view.
[13]
IGEA. 2023. Australian Game Development Survey FY 2023 Report. Available at https://igea.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/AGDS-2023-Report-Final.pdf.
[14]
Dan Irish. 2005. The Game Producer’s Handbook. Course Tech. Press, BOS, MA, USA.
[15]
Randolph M. Jones. 2000. Design and Implementation of Computer Games: A Capstone Course for Undergraduate Computer Science Education. In Proceedings of the 31st SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Comp. Sci. Education (Austin, Texas, USA) (SIGCSE ’00). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 260–264.
[16]
Ben Kenwright. 2016. Holistic Game Development Curriculum. In SIGGRAPH ASIA 2016 Symposium on Education (Macau) (SA ’16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Article 2, 5 pages.
[17]
Diana Kirk, Andrew Luxton-Reilly, Ewan Tempero, Tyne Crow, Paul Denny, Allan Fowler, Steffan Hooper, Andrew Meads, Asma Shakil, Paramvir Singh, Craig Sutherland, Yi-Chien Vita Tsai, and Burkhard Wuensche. 2024. Educator Experiences of Low Overhead Student Project Risk Management. In Proceedings of the 26th Australasian Computing Education Conference (Sydney, NSW, Australia) (ACE ’24). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 58–67.
[18]
Amruth N. Kumar and Rajendra K. Raj. 2024. Computer Science Curricula 2023 (CS2023): The Final Report. In Proceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 2 (Portland, OR, USA) (SIGCSE 2024). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1867–1868.
[19]
Amruth N. Kumar, Rajendra K. Raj, Sherif G. Aly, Monica D. Anderson, Brett A. Becker, Richard L. Blumenthal, Eric Eaton, Susan L. Epstein, Michael Goldweber, Pankaj Jalote, Douglas Lea, Michael Oudshoorn, Marcelo Pias, Susan Reiser, Christian Servin, Rahul Simha, Titus Winters, and Qiao Xiang. 2024. Computer Science Curricula 2023. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA.
[20]
Luis Levy and Jeannie Novak. 2009. Game Development Essentials: Game QA & Testing (1st ed.). Delmar Learning.
[21]
Mark C. Lewis and Berna Massingill. 2006. Graphical Game Development in CS2: A Flexible Infrastructure for a Semester Long Project. SIGCSE Bull. 38, 1 (mar 2006), 505–509.
[22]
Andrew Luxton-Reilly and Paul Denny. 2009. A Simple Framework for Interactive Games in CS1. SIGCSE Bull. 41, 1 (mar 2009), 216–220.
[23]
Andrew Luxton-Reilly, Ewan Tempero, Nalin Arachchilage, Angela Chang, Paul Denny, Allan Fowler, Nasser Giacaman, Igor Kontorovich, Danielle Lottridge, Sathiamoorthy Manoharan, Shyamli Sindhwani, Paramvir Singh, Ulrich Speidel, Sudeep Stephen, Valerio Terragni, Jacqueline Whalley, Burkhard Wuensche, and Xinfeng Ye. 2023. Automated Assessment: Experiences From the Trenches. In Proc. of the 25th Australasian Computing Education Conference (Melbourne, VIC, Australia) (ACE ’23). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1–10.
[24]
Stefan Marks and Sebastián Gil Parga. 2023. Computer Graphics and Extended Reality Courses for the Programmophobic. In SIGGRAPH Asia 2023 Educator’s Forum (Sydney, NSW, Australia) (SA ’23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 3, 8 pages.
[25]
Michael Mateas and Jim Whitehead. 2007. Design Issues for Undergraduate Game-Oriented Degrees. Proceedings of the 2007 Microsoft Academic Days on Game Development in Computer Science Education (2007), 85–89.
[26]
Mike McShaffry and David Graham. 2012. Game Coding Complete. Delmar Learning.
[27]
Robin Isfold Munkvold. 2017. Game lab: A Practical Learning Approach for Game Development. (2017).
[28]
Ivan Adriyanov Nikolov. 2023. But Worse: Remaking Famous Games on a Budget as a Game Development Course. In 17th International Technology, Education and Development Conference. IATED, 2991–2997.
[29]
NZGDA. 2022. NZ Interactive Media Industry Survey 2022. https://nzgda.com/news/nz-interactive-media-industry-survey-2022/. [Accessed 22-Jan-2024].
[30]
Ian Parberry, Max B. Kazemzadeh, and Timothy Roden. 2006. The Art and Science of Game Programming. In Proceedings of the 37th SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (Houston, Texas, USA) (SIGCSE ’06). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 510–514.
[31]
Ian Parberry, Timothy Roden, and Max B. Kazemzadeh. 2005. Experience with an Industry-Driven Capstone Course on Game Programming. ACM SIGCSE Bull. 37, 1 (2005), 91–95.
[32]
Chao Peng. 2015. Introductory Game Development Course: A Mix of Programming and Art. In 2015 International Conference on Computational Science and Computational Intelligence (CSCI). 271–276.
[33]
Martin Ponichtera. 2024. Martin Ponichtera. https://ponichtera.wixsite.com/portfolio. [Accessed 22-Jan-2024].
[34]
Yolanda Rankin, Bruce Gooch, and Amy Gooch. 2007. Interweaving Game Design into Core CS Curriculum. In Proceedings of the 2007 Microsoft Academic Days Game Development Conference, Nassau, Bahamas, February, Vol. 21. 2007.
[35]
Albert D. Ritzhaupt. 2009. Creating a Game Development Course with Limited Resources: An Evaluation Study. ACM Trans. Comput. Educ. 9, 1, Article 3 (mar 2009), 16 pages.
[36]
Ben Stephenson, Mark James, Nigel Brooke, and John Aycock. 2016. An Industrial Partnership Game Development Capstone Course. In Proceedings of the 17th Annual Conference on Information Technology Education (BOS, MA, USA) (SIGITE ’16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 136–141.
[37]
Nathan R. Sturtevant, H. James Hoover, Jonathan Schaeffer, Sean Gouglas, Michael H. Bowling, Finnegan Southey, Matthew Bouchard, and Ghassan Zabaneh. 2008. Multidisciplinary Students and Instructors: A Second-Year Games Course. SIGCSE Bull. 40, 1 (mar 2008), 383–387.
[38]
Thomas Suselo, Burkhard C. Wünsche, and Andrew Luxton-Reilly. 2017. The Journey to Improve Teaching Computer Graphics: A Systematic Review. In Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Computers in Education (ICCE 2017). APSCE, Christchurch, New Zealand, 361–366.
[39]
Taito. 1978. Space Invaders. [Arcade].
[40]
Mark J. Taylor and Michael Baskett. 2009. The Science and Art of Computer Games Development for Undergraduate Students. Comput. Entertain. 7, 2, Article 24 (jun 2009), 9 pages.
[41]
Bian Wu and Alf Inge Wang. 2012. A Guideline for Game Development-Based Learning: A Literature Review. International Journal of Computer Games Technology 2012, Article 8 (jan 2012), 1 pages.
[42]
José P. Zagal and John Sharp. 2011. A Survey of Final Project Courses in Game Programs: Considerations for Teaching Capstone. https://dl.digra.org/index.php/dl/article/view/590. In Proceedings of DiGRA 2011 Conference: Think Design Play. DiGRA, Tampere.
Index Terms
- Projects and Portfolios — An Educator's Reflections on the Summative Assessments in a Game Programming Course
Recommendations
Experience with an industry-driven capstone course on game programming: extended abstract
Game programming classes have been offered at the University of North Texas continuously since 1993. The classes are project based, and feature collaborative coursework with art majors in UNT's School of Visual Arts. We discuss the design that enables ...
Experience with an industry-driven capstone course on game programming: extended abstract
SIGCSE '05: Proceedings of the 36th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science educationGame programming classes have been offered at the University of North Texas continuously since 1993. The classes are project based, and feature collaborative coursework with art majors in UNT's School of Visual Arts. We discuss the design that enables ...
Life two years after a game programming course: longitudinal viewpoints on K-12 outreach
SIGCSE '12: Proceedings of the 43rd ACM technical symposium on Computer Science EducationIn our faculty we have run week-long K-12 game programming courses now for three summers. In this paper we investigate what programming-related activities students do after they take a course, and what factors in the students' background relate to post-...
Comments
Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.Information & Contributors
Information
Published In
Copyright © 2024 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the owner/author(s).
Sponsors
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery
New York, NY, United States
Publication History
Published: 22 November 2024
Check for updates
Author Tags
Qualifiers
- Abstract
Conference
SA '24
Sponsor:
Acceptance Rates
Overall Acceptance Rate 178 of 869 submissions, 20%
Contributors
Other Metrics
Bibliometrics & Citations
Bibliometrics
Article Metrics
- 0Total Citations
- 281Total Downloads
- Downloads (Last 12 months)281
- Downloads (Last 6 weeks)281
Reflects downloads up to 27 Dec 2024
Other Metrics
Citations
View Options
Login options
Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.
Sign inFull Access
View options
View or Download as a PDF file.
PDFeReader
View online with eReader.
eReaderFull Text
View this article in Full Text.
Full TextHTML Format
View this article in HTML Format.
HTML Format