From IAMMediaWiki Create Change

Proposal to revise Game Animation concentration

Proposed title: Game Art

Rationale

As the Game Design major in IAM anticipates its first graduating class in spring ’09, we have an opportunity and an obligation to reflect upon the successes and inadequacies of our program, and to make adjustments and revisions where necessary. At the time the program was designed, there were very few curricula upon which to model ours. Now, however, we have the luxury of comparing ourselves to a number of schools, and while we can easily make changes in the three concentrations housed fully in our department, we are forced, through this process, to confront the difficulties of coordinating our major with our Game Animation concentration housed in Film/Video.

Following is an explanation of some issues we encounter and a suggested solution: the redesign of the concentration with more of its constituent courses in IAM.

Some difficulties encountered:

Management:

Administrative oversight is insufficiently coordinated between Film/Video and IAM, where the majority of courses in the major are housed. It is widely accepted that any program or specialty in the College requires Coordination, relying, as it does, on a predominantly part time cadre of instructors.

In IAM, Coordinators

provide intellectual, technical, and creative leadership for an area,
inform the Chair and Associate Chair of the likely need for certain classes in upcoming semester schedules,
hire and supervise part time faculty
coordinate their proposed class schedules with those of the rest of the department (it is the intention of the IAM/Game Major to do more cross-Concentration class pairings with shared topics and projects),
perform peer and student evaluations and make these results available to the chair and associate chair.

It appears that the Animation Concentration does not have, nor has ever had a Coordinator.

Timing issues:

Film/Video courses in animation are typically four hours in duration while those in IAM are three hours. Because of the scheduling of animation classes, students in the concentration are prevented from taking afternoon classes in IAM (or elsewhere). The timing overlap is twenty minutes: F/V classes begin at 6 PM, while IAM classes end at 6:20, conforming to the Universal Start Time schedule. This mere twenty minutes creates scheduling problems for our students, and prevents us from using IAM facilities for animation courses (which increases enrollment) unless we do not schedule classes in the afternoon. This has been marginally possible because we have had the luxury of ample classroom space, but will become increasingly difficult in our new space at 916/1000 S. Wabash.

Student advising:

Without a firm grasp of the content and intention of the courses, and a first hand knowledge of what occurs in them, IAM faculty are not adequately equipped to take on advising of students in the Animation Concentration in addition to students in their own areas of specialization. Advisors in Animation for Game Design must be conversant with the requirements of the entire program, not just their specialty within it, and must actively engage in advising efforts made by the IAM department. They must be engaged in creating solutions to problems that occur when students

Cannot find an appropriate class in their major
Need to withdraw from a class with a co-requisite
Need evaluation for classes transferred from another program
Etc.

At present, each student problem must be referred and re-referred to the faculty and chair in IAM as well as to the faculty and director of the Animation Program, and frequently to staff in the Advising Center. This is cumbersome and time consuming, and results in frustration for all concerned. Faculty in IAM do not have the ability to access Class Lists, for example, for appropriate animation classes, nor do they have the ability to add or drop students or to make exceptions in pre-requisites or substitutions.

Curriculum design:

The curriculum in Animation was designed by the animation faculty in Film/Video, unlike the rest of the Game Design major, which was designed by faculty in IAM. We find that, because of the vast amount of knowledge necessary for an animator in today’s game development environment, much more intensive, game-adapted information must be conveyed much earlier in the program.* The current design of the Animation Concentration includes many courses and class topics that, while they may add to a student’s overall capability, are not as necessary to their actual performance in a professional game development environment as more computer-intensive classes would be, and as a result analysis shows that our students are well behind students in other programs. This is in part due to the fact that our program exists in a liberal education environment, and IAM has a strenuous core foundation series of classes in which students take many classes outside their major, and in part to the current emphasis on traditional animation techniques early in the concentration.

In order to remedy this situation, we suggest a revised Concentration in Game Art to supplant the current concentration in Game Animation. A four-year plan and revised learning objectives are appended.

* As per information from faculty attending the Game Developer’s Conference, Educator’s track, 2/08.