[games_access] Teaching GA - session (was: intimate controllers)

[d. michelle hinn]

Well it could be interesting to collect the different approaches from 
doing one lesson to teaching a whole course based around it. I was 
thinking that the session would be learning what to TEACH of GA. I 
think how to teach it probably belongs in the domain of education 
conferences like the one at University of Wisconsin, etc. But in the 
"what to teach" there is always room for sharing how that was 
actually taught. So it could be a little bit of both. There are two 
textbooks that mention GA now (Jeannie Novak's, which is in her book, 
and Ernest Adams', which is an online companion to the book so 
instructors using those books could benefit from learning how to 
teach that info and in how much more depth they can include. I mean 
there's "THE BOOK" (SIG book) but I don't see that being widely 
adopted as a course text unless it was like my class that was all 
about accessibility. I can see chapters being used and I think that 
the biggest audience will, of course, be game devs.

[Btw, my revision of the contract is almost finished...seems like the 
first chapter or so of the book could come directly from my 
dissertation so that's cool! I imagine that will be the case for you 
and others for some other chapters!]

I would think that it would be interesting and informative to provide 
a few different lesson plans that the audience can take with them and 
automatically (and/or with revisions to make it personal) include in 
their own classes. That way they can see what topics were covered. I 
see another role of the SIG as getting more instructors to include 
the topic in design courses. Women and games has definitely seen a 
surge in how often lecturers include that in their syllabi. After 
all, the students are our future designers and researchers and it 
works well with our other idea of moving from arcade to an expo booth 
in order to reach more design students who can only afford an expo or 
other limited pass. The session might also attract some serious games 
for training folks who might be interested in running an 
accessibility workshop at their company (ie, a company might send one 
person to GDC and that person can return with an "instant lesson 
plan" to teach to others back at their company).

It runs parallel with the efforts of you and Sander with audio game 
maker, Reid and Eelke's [cc] work, and Dimitris' "Game Over," 
Barrie's hardware work, and (I know I'm not including half the list) 
more.  We want to strike at multiple angles and since several of us 
are instructors, we can attack that angle while others in the SIG 
attack other angles that are more attractive to devs, publishers, 
students, etc. As Ben mentioned a while back, we're bumping up 
against success -- we just need to spread out a bit and let those 
with expertise in one area run the show for one session and others 
run other sessions. They would still be SIG sessions (it's easier to 
get them accepted when presented as being SIG-related) but with added 
value of having different people "owning" sessions. That way we don't 
get "too general" comments back from the audience.

Man...I type some long emails, huh?

Michelle

>Hi,
>
>Interesting idea (teaching). I've been doing a 2 hour-lesson or two 
>per year for my game design students on the subject (well, aside 
>from the audio games lesson), but which was really really basic. 
>But: what would such a session constitute of? Get to learn how to 
>teach GA? Or: get to learn what to teach OF GA?
>
>Greets,
>
>Richard
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: <mailto:hinn at uiuc.edu>d. michelle hinn
>To: <mailto:games_access at igda.org>IGDA Games Accessibility SIG Mailing List
>Sent: Sunday, June 17, 2007 1:51 AM
>Subject: Re: [games_access] intimate controllers
>
>And convince Noah too. :) The last I heard both Ernest and Sheri 
>were going to actually develop their games too so if Noah for some 
>reason declines, then you could ping the other two.
>
>You know...just thinking some more here, it'd be interesting to have 
>a session on TEACHING game accessibility. I'm sure that there's more 
>than enough of us here that could pull together an interesting 
>session for the education part of GDC.
>
>Just throwing around ideas here. Stop me before we get to twenty proposals. ;)
>
>Michelle
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