Course Materials
One of the crucial components of my work involves trying to make using videogames in the composition classroom easier by providing materials like those seen already, but also by actually showing what using games in the classroom can look like. The majority of research on using games in the composition classroom involves revolves around surface-level discussion ("ask your students to create games in class!") without showing what approach might be taken to actually carry out such ambitions. Over the past year I actively engaged with this process in my course at FSU, ENC 1145: Writing About the Rhetoric of Videogames.
Below are sample materials from my course, including assignment sheets, presentations, plans, handouts, articles, and connections to the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing, as discussed in my thesis work. It is worth noting that these materials are in constant flux, and I'm always searching for better, refined approaches to my course and these materials, so I've updated this section to include dates that I've used this content and/or refined it. I'll try to stay as updated as possible as time and semesters progress.
Below are sample materials from my course, including assignment sheets, presentations, plans, handouts, articles, and connections to the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing, as discussed in my thesis work. It is worth noting that these materials are in constant flux, and I'm always searching for better, refined approaches to my course and these materials, so I've updated this section to include dates that I've used this content and/or refined it. I'll try to stay as updated as possible as time and semesters progress.
Gaming Topoi
For more focused content that provides set concepts and lesson plans for using in your classroom, however, I recommend checking out my new section of this website that I'm working to expand called "gaming topoi" that provides set lesson plans and ideas for instructors to use, including links to games players can experiment with in class.
Creative Commons Licensing- An Explanation
While I am anxious to share my work and do hope to see videogame-infused pedagogy as something which can be brought into classrooms extending beyond my own, I would like first to share my enthusiasm for the Creative Commons. The materials presented below are all shared with the intention of being observed with the Creative Commons license seen below, which asks anyone using these materials to provide attribution to my texts, not use these materials commercially, and share your derivative works under the same license. Thank you for taking an interest in my research, and I hope to see your interest turn into a desire to incorporate some of these plans into your own pedagogy.
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Class Websites
Fall 2013Since first crafting this course and defining videogame-infused pedagogy in the fall of 2012, my approach and focus has refined significantly. I encourage you to visit my new ENC 1145 custom page featuring updated versions of the content seen below, including assignment sheets and updated content. This new content will be coming to this page soon, but to access it early in an updated but currently uncurated fashion, please do click the image to the left!
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Spring 2014You can also check out my in-progress ENC 1145 course website here, to see how I'm altering and shaping and providing content now before it hits this site! New content here will always get an additional editing pass, but if you want to see where the proverbial rubber hits the road of my course throughout a semester, you can do so here!
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ENC 1145 ArcadeClicking the image on the left will take you to a series of sample games created by my students using Twine and AXMA, free programs listed under the Free Resources section of this site. Each of these student games also features an advertisement for the game in question (either a poster, game box, or trailer). Finally, students were asked to turn in a reflection on the process of creating their games and the advertisement which assesses their game through Jesse Schell's Elemental Tetrad of game development, seen in his book The Art of Game Design. The assignment sheet for this project can be seen as well in my section on Course Materials.
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Course Blogs
Spring 2013
Click the image to the left to see how blogs have been incorporated into my course using videogames. Students are required at FSU to write informally in journals, and as such, blogs provide a viable option for instructors at FSU teaching FYC. My course uses the blogs as a chance to examine social issues in videogames and the nature of games as texts. Weekly blog entry topics include: censorship in Apple's iTunes store, whether or not games are capable of tackling issues like Columbine and 9/11 using examples of real games, immersion in games, levying criticism against games we love, the intersections between games and art, and how the lines between games and the real world have slowly become blurry.
Fall 2013
Whereas my Spring 2013 course blog focused on content that related to the social elements of games and gameplay, my revisions for the Fall of 2013 brought the focus back to classroom projects. Click the image to the left to access the section of my course website where I posted the blog prompts that focus more closely on the content of the assignments and the course itself.
Spring 2014
Whereas my Spring 2013 course blog focused on content that related to the social elements of games and gameplay, my revisions for the Fall of 2013 brought the focus back to classroom projects. Click the image to the left to access the section of my course website where I posted the blog prompts that focus more closely on the content of the assignments and the course itself.
Project 1- Connecting with the Game World (Spring 2014)
This narrative-based assignment is the first in my course each semester I've taught ENC 1145 with videogame-infused pedagogy. This assignment is designed to ease students into my course and familiarize them with writing, videogames, designing images, and synthesizing these things together. I've included it in my assignment sheet, but nonetheless, I'm including below a list of Habits of Mind and Outcomes from the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing that this assignment targets.
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Project 2- Seeing the Game World Procedurally (Spring 2014)
This project tasks students with playing a game of their choosing (or using one of many we play together in class) to analyze the argument being made in the game's processes using Bogost's procedural rhetoric as a framework and comparing this to processes in the "real world" based on research students conducted for the assignment.
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Project 3- Designing a Game World of Your Own (Spring 2014)
This project asks students to design their own game for a specific audience, from the ground up, using a text-based generator, or to otherwise design one with a host of other programs compiled on this website to create a more graphically focused title with traditional gameplay elements. Furthermore, these games must be accompanied by an advertisement that targets a specific audience with an equally suitable medium.
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Project 4- Participating in the Game World (Spring 2013)
The initial version of my final project for this course and the one I wrote about most recently for my article appearing in a collection on using Valve's Steam for Schools tools in the context of technical writing pedagogy. This project asks students to play Portal 2 in class, design a puzzle chamber in the game and documentation for duplicating said chamber, along with testing and reflections on the experience.
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Project 4 (Variant)- Planning the Perfect Heist (Spring 2014)
In an effort to continue reshaping and evolving my course on videogame-infused pedagogy, I decided to experiment last semester with my final project. This project focuses on using the game Monaco to create procedural documentation for completing a level with a specific character or group of characters.
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Games as Rhetoric Unit: Daily Plans
Below you'll see day-by-day versions of my plans for the Games as Rhetoric unit of my course that focuses on Ian Bogost's work with procedural rhetoric from the previous Spring and Fall semesters.
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Presentation on Burke's Pentad (Updated Spring 2014)
In the second unit of my course, Games as Rhetoric, a crucial component was analyzing games rhetorically and providing tools for doing just that. Students in Spring of 2013 were asked to apply one of a few analytical frameworks to a videogame of their choosing and bring in screenshots of said game to emphasize the points being made throughout. Among them were Burke's Pentad and Ian Bogost's notion of Procedurality. Below, you can see versions of the presentations I used in class to help my students understand the articles read on Burke and Bogost. Click here for the article used in my course on Burke's Pentad.
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Presentation on Bogost's Procedurality (Spring 2014)
Below, like the previous document, is a presentation used in class which accompanies our reading of Bogost's "The Rhetoric of Videogames." While Bogost's book How to do Things with Videogames is a routine part of our course and part of the multimodal course presentations performed by students on each chapter, this article lays out how Bogost sees the rhetoric of games operating, and below is my attempt to explain these complex concepts to my freshman students and make quotes available to them.
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Additional Handout on Procedural Analysis (Spring 2014)
As you might suspect, and as I've encountered a few times, trying to explain and integrate something as complex as procedural rhetoric can get a bit messy, thus I'm including some supplementary materials I designed to help my students grapple with analysis via procedural rhetoric. Feel free to borrow these to help students understand how they might be able to better analyze the procedural rhetoric of a game, and what that process means and looks like.
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Jesse Schell's "Elemental Tetrad" Presentation
This presentation is one I've been using to illustrate how the Elemental Tetrad of Schell works during Unit 3 of the course to show students how to design text-based games and give them a framework for doing so. It points at the big concepts in Schell's work and discusses how they function based on his text, chapters of which I've linked to below.
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