Posts tagged with education in Blog Eaten by a Grue

Curious about which university classes are incorporating games into their studies? Here is a list of game-related classes happening this semester.

If you are a student here at the University of Michigan, there are a couple of new video game-related courses being offered:For Summer 2013:COMM 488-201, SAC 455-202 - Video Games, Culture, & Contexts This course takes as its focus the cultural impact of video games from a number of critical perspectives. Just as movies and television have a rich history, video games develop out of a number of social, economic, and technological structures. We will examine video games as cultural texts that are part of a complex, cultural landscape—objects revealing much about cultural anxieties, ideologies, and assumptions. We will analyze a number of video game texts, ranging from early arcade style games, to console games, to PC games, to games for mobile phones. A range of genres within these game texts will be discussed, such as first person shooters, massively multi-player online games, and casual games—unpacking both the formal aspects of the game and the underlying meaning of game narratives. How and by whom are video games produced, how does the industry market particular games to its perceived audience, who plays games and why, and what is so serious about “serious” games? We will draw from a range of methodological and theoretical texts within the field of game studies: critical cultural, ethnographic, media effects, industrial, and historical. (Instructor: Julia Lange) And for Fall 2013:MUSPERF  300 - Video Game MusicThis course surveys game music from the first synthesized "bleeps" and "bloops" to modern orchestral compositions.  Techniques are learned to aurally analyze game music.  Students will create compositions using computer software as a final project.  Course is designed for non-music majors; the ability to read standard music notation is not needed. (Instructor: Matthew Thompson)

Coursera, a website that teams up with professors from various universities to offer free online courses to the public, is offering an introductory course on gamification, a concept that is gaining speed quickly. The course begins this week. This is reportedly one of the first courses designed specifically for the concept of gamification, and the course itself is partly designed to explore the meaning and purpose of the concept, as well as to generate ideas on how to apply it in relevant ways. Read more about the course here.

The CVGA was featured today in an AnnArbor.com article entitled "U-M computer and video game archive has lofty goal: Collect every game ever made." In it, our founder Dave Carter describes our purpose and goals for the archive.The article also got a mention on FARK.com, complete with lively and colorful comments about the games that we should have in our collection.

UM is hosting a two-week game design boot camp at the Computer Science Building on North Campus, led by award-winning game designer Sid Meier and UM EECS professor John Laird.It will be held May 7-18, and is targeted at undergraduates in their junior/senior year or recent graduates, with previous class-related or independent game design experience.

A recent Wired article highlights the use of the Kinect as a terrain imaging tool, to capture data for anything from glaciers to asteroids. According to Tedesco, one of the scientists mentioned in the article, the Kinect works as a much more affordable way to capture the kind of data they need. It also helps inspire students to do related research because the Kinect is a tool that they're likely already familiar with, and doesn't seem as imposing as more complicated imaging equipment.

Submissions are being accepted for the National STEM Video Game Challenge, an opportunity for students and educators to flex their creative muscles and share their original video game concepts.The competition is divided into four categories: Middle School, High School, Collegiate, and Educators. The general goal of the competition is to motivate interest is Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM).Submissions will be accepted anytime between November 15th - March 12.

A new game called Planet Hunters, set up by a list of organizations including the University of Oxford and Yale University, enlists the help of gamers to seek out new civilizations. Or at least discover potentially new planets, by searching through NASA Kepler public release data. According to Gamasutra's article, "Every user who helps to discover a planet is then named in the acknowledgements as part of The Royal Astronomical Society monthly notices." The official report explains more of the details.

Online gamers have used a game called FoldIt to help decipher "the structure of an enzyme of an AIDS-like virus," helping scientists to develop "new insights for the design of antiretroviral drugs. "While the enzyme had "thwarted scientists for a decade," the entire process took the online gamers only about 3 weeks to crack.

University of Michigan psychology professor Susanne M. Jaeggi was quoted today in an L.A. Times article about research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that explored the possibility of certain video games improving the reasoning and working memory ability of children who play them.