Developing a New Major

We’re working on new curriculum initiatives where I teach – about videogames. I’m involved in trying to get them off the ground. The chair of my dept suggested I keep a journal about the efforts to see if there might be a journal article about the process that I could write. I figured a blog would be a good place to do such a journal since I wouldn’t have to worry about losing it (if you know me, you know that’s a real possibility)

SO here’s the first journal entry

at this point I have a really clear idea of how i want the program to look – it’s based on the suggestions in the IGDA curriculum framework which was created with faculty and industry input. Everybody takes some computer science and some art related stuff because no matter what job they have in the field they will need to be able to talk to the techie types and hte art types.

we have a couple of advantages here – the strong liberal arts component of any of our degrees – they have to take 60 hours of liberal arts and 60 hours outside of the school. The computer science folks are on board – they have students interested in doing this kind of programming but need exposure to interdisciplinary teams and to story tellers, artists, audio folks, and people with a video background. Which we have. So we have the interdisciplinary buy-in from a few departments so far.

we have a couple of disadvantages – location being a biggie. It will be hard to recruit students and faculty because there aren’t any game companies around (yet – maybe we can start one<G> – or recruit one to move here). We don’t have a big reputation yet int he field so faculty with skills and experience wouldn’t necessarily look at this as a n umber one or two choice unless we do a great job of selling our strengths. Another weakness is that many of the faculty here already aren’t particularly interested in doing anything online. There’s a possibility we put together the curriculum proposal and the rest of hte faculty shoot it down – that’s true of any curriculum proposal (it could get shot down at the school level , the college level, or the state level – but the school level would hurt the most personally) A third weakness – some administration folks who are supportive are leaving – retiring or going to other jobs. So we don’t know what kind of support the new hires will bring.

More int he next post

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