The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
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2:46pm on Wednesday, 7th March, 2018:
Anecdote
This morning at 9am was the CE217 class in which I run a game about company management. The aim is for the students to get a feel for who does what in a game development studio, and to have some fun as they do it. The game lasts up to three hours (and is why I book my class slots to be three hours long) so I want people to be there at the start. I impressed this upon the students at the CE217 lecture yesterday.
The game involves a lot of handouts. Because the university won't pay for colour photocopying, I print these off myself on my printer at home. It costs quite a lot in ink, but colour-coding makes the game a little easier to follow so I do it nevertheless. I printed off enough for ten teams of two or three players each; I may be supposed to have 80 students at the class, but I'm realistic enough to know not to expect more than 30.
At 9am, there were five.
Ten minutes later, another eight had shown up. I was a bit upset, to be honest, but I couldn't complain to the students there at 9am because they were the ones who'd made the effort to come.
I ran the game as usual, handed out the chocolates I'd got as a prize for the winner's team, and left slightly less disconsolate. Most of the students hadn't shown up, but the ones that had seemed to enjoy the game.
It's interesting how students from different cohorts behave differently. My third-year students are extremely engaged, and ask questions and butt in the whole time. It's great! My second-year students — even the ones who got to the class on time — hardly say a thing either to me or to each other. From what I saw of the first-year students when we had the induction week at the start of the Autumn term, they're more like the third-years than like the second-years.
I don't know why this is. The CE217 lectures are at the same time as last year, the material is updated but pretty well the same; only the rooms and the students are different.
Oh well.
At the meeting of the Games Intelligence Group this afternoon, the four IGGI PhD students not on leave all showed up, but none of the dozen or so Games MSc students did.
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Copyright © 2018 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).