The Director's Cut

I got a book in the mail today about Serious Games. No shortage of those these days, but this one is fascinating. Clark Abt is the author, wrote his book in…1970. There's some mention of computer models, but the text is more concerned with game dynamics and how they can supplement formal education.

Abt appears to be the James Brown of serious gaming…the godfather, the pioneer. More interesting is that I'd never seen references to this work in the modern serious gaming literature. Let me know if you're interested in this area, I'll get us some copies (used, of course…mine came from a public library in Moline, IL...smells like old books should).

Again, it's fascinating to see Abt's ideas, how all the hip, cool kids in serious gaming these days are just reinventing his stuff…

Earlier this week, Amy and Stevie showed me a list of courses that SI is maintaining/developing. There's always been a question of what we can/should continue to do while moving into new territory. So I spoke with Dean Foley about some of this yesterday.

Here's what we can do.

1. Let's make all developed courses open in some way, let the Commonwealth faculty have access to 'em. We can try to come up with creative ways to hand off the content. But we should also tell them that we'll no longer do the maintenance. There'll be some transition time needed to get them ready for this, but we have approval to move these out of our way.
2. Having said that, Dean Foley did suggest that IST 110 and SRA 111 might be the courses to hold on to. Since they're the intro courses, and they're important for recruiting, retention, etc. The 110H offering with Andrea Tapia could be a good way to start rethinking our role in course development.
3. Cause we might have to do some for more courses in the SRA major. But we should rethink our approaches to this. There's no reason to have faculty write tomes of material that we'd distribute online. Would be more interesting to think about interesting areas that aren't covered by textbooks, place our efforts there. E.g., developing simulations and other materials to help students engage in SRA practices.
4. The Dean said that he may send the Professional Masters program to World Campus. I'm sure we could fight for it if necessary. Or make some revisions to existing things if Prof. Chu wants some of what we have to be part of the M.S. curriculum. Else, it's a another thing we can avoid.
5. One of many strengths in Edison Services is the peer review tools. Maybe we can strip that out of Edison, keep it as a standalone tool? I know it gets used, so it make sense to hang on to it. If it's easy to do that.

These are options we have. We don't necessarily have to cut these things, but it gives us freedom to do other stuff. Definitely worth discussing sooner than later.