A writing-intensive course for videogame design majors.

Project Team Members

• Rachel Burns
• Cynthia Pengilly
• B.C. Wilson

Statement of Purpose
Our group has designed a writing-intensive class for videogame design students to introduce some of the genres of writing they will encounter in their field.

1. The first part of this three-part class will examine academic and critical writing about videogames.
2. The second part will delve into production of game narratives.
3. The third will explore technical writing, including proposals.

The purpose of the class is to help students become competent writers of these genres through development of techniques for analysis, invention, writing, review, and revision.

Why?
Writing and rhetoric do not exist merely inside the English classroom; every field employs its own forms of pursuasive communication, but the forms are specific to the field.

Our research showed that most game design degree plans do not even require a lower level composition course, and we feel this is a disservice to students in these degree plans. We hope a class like this may be adopted by the institutions we have researched that do not allow the space for writing in a field where it is over looked, yet indispensable.

See Exigency for a more complete look at why this course is needed.

How to Use This Site
We have arranged our project on a wiki site that is publicly accessible to students, as well as other teachers.

The site includes our original Course Proposal, as well as all the components needed to teach this class:

• Syllabus
  • Teaching philosophy, grading methods, and class schedule
• Assignments
  • Specific instructions for the three main assignments
• Reading List
  • Required texts and suggestions for further reading
• Teacher Guide
  • Information for teachers looking to incorporate a portion of this curriculum into their own composition classroom.

Class Presentation
Our project will be presented to the class online through this wiki and will be publicly accessible to everyone in the event that they would like to use one of the resources we have posted.