Adopting Commercially Inspired Practices Within an Academic Teaching Course - A Case Study of a Computer Games Engineering Degree

G. Ushaw, W. Blewitt, G. Morgan

2014

Abstract

A case study of a computer games engineering course is presented. The course has been designed with close input from industry and is achieving a high rate of success in the number of graduates being recruited by the target industry. The organisers of the course have extensive experience in both the software engineering industry, and in delivering academic teaching. These experiences are combined so that commercial software development practices, technologies and philosophies are adopted throughout the delivery of the academic course. The paper discusses the specifics of how and why this was achieved, and uses the Game Engineering course as an exemplar for encouraging the adoption of commercially inspired techniques within the teaching of software engineering and computer science more generally.

References

  1. Baekkelund, C. (2006). Academic ai research and relations with the games industry. AI Game Programming Wisdom, 3:77-88.
  2. Blewitt, W., Ushaw, G., and Morgan, G. (2013). Applicability of gpgpu computing to real-time ai solutions in games. IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games, 5(3):265-275.
  3. Boud, D. (1988). Developing student autonomy in learning. Psychology Press.
  4. Corney, M., Teague, D., and Thomas, R. N. (2010). Engaging students in programming. In Proceedings of the Twelfth Australasian Conference on Computing Education-Volume 103, pages 63-72. Australian Computer Society, Inc.
  5. Hilburn, T. B. and Humphrey, W. S. (2002). Teaching teamwork. Software, IEEE, 19(5):72-77.
  6. Jiménez, C. and Villalobos, J. (2010). Learning/teaching a computer programming course. Analysis of State-ofthe-Art Solutions for Personalised Learning Support, page 3.
  7. Livingstone, I. and Hope, A. (2011). Next gen.: Transforming the uk into the worlds leading talent hub for the video games and visual effects industries. nesta.
  8. Matthes, F., Neubert, C., Schulz, C., Lescher, C., Contreras, J., Laurini, R., Rumpler, B., Sol, D., and Warendorf, K. (2011). Teaching global software engineering and international project management. In Third International Conference on Computer Supported Education.
  9. Perkmann, M., King, Z., and Pavelin, S. (2011). Engaging excellence? effects of faculty quality on university engagement with industry. Research Policy, 40(4):539- 552.
  10. Reeve, J., Bolt, E., and Cai, Y. (1999). Autonomysupportive teachers: How they teach and motivate students. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91(3):537.
  11. Reeve, J., Jang, H., Carrell, D., Jeon, S., and Barch, J. (2004). Enhancing students' engagement by increasing teachers' autonomy support. Motivation and emotion, 28(2):147-169.
  12. Vega, C., Jiménez, C., and Villalobos, J. (2012). Implementing an incremental project-based learning solution for cs1/cs2 courses. In Second International Conference on Computer Supported Education, pages 15- 27.
  13. Winslow, L. E. (1996). Programming pedagogya psychological overview. ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, 28(3):17- 22.
Download


Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Ushaw G., Blewitt W. and Morgan G. (2014). Adopting Commercially Inspired Practices Within an Academic Teaching Course - A Case Study of a Computer Games Engineering Degree . In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 2: CSEDU, ISBN 978-989-758-021-5, pages 95-102. DOI: 10.5220/0004765700950102


in Bibtex Style

@conference{csedu14,
author={G. Ushaw and W. Blewitt and G. Morgan},
title={Adopting Commercially Inspired Practices Within an Academic Teaching Course - A Case Study of a Computer Games Engineering Degree},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 2: CSEDU,},
year={2014},
pages={95-102},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0004765700950102},
isbn={978-989-758-021-5},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 2: CSEDU,
TI - Adopting Commercially Inspired Practices Within an Academic Teaching Course - A Case Study of a Computer Games Engineering Degree
SN - 978-989-758-021-5
AU - Ushaw G.
AU - Blewitt W.
AU - Morgan G.
PY - 2014
SP - 95
EP - 102
DO - 10.5220/0004765700950102