IGDA Curriculum Framework Redesign: Need Africa's Input
Hello Everyone,
My name is David, I'm working with one of the IGDA Education SIG (IGDA EduSIG) teams to redesign the old games-curriculum framework for schools and institutions.
To that end, we need input from Africa, and so I'm trying to discover schools and institutions, in a few African countries, that teach game design or games-related courses, as well as acquire their respective syllabi; for feedback to the redesign-team.
My current focus is on these 6 (randomly selected) countries below. Please if you happen to know any institutions or have (maybe) contacts in these countries, who might know, I'd really appreciate your help. And for those who don't have any information, any other constructive input you have is much welcome too. Thank you !!!
- Kenya
- Senegal
- Ghana
- Cameroon
- Uganda
- South Africa
As a sidenote, I know there're alot of institutions in south africa, unlike many other african countries, that teach games-related courses, but due to this volume, I'm rather uncertain of where to start :)
Thank you for all replies and help !!
Twitter Handle: @0_0_MiDE
My name is David, I'm working with one of the IGDA Education SIG (IGDA EduSIG) teams to redesign the old games-curriculum framework for schools and institutions.
To that end, we need input from Africa, and so I'm trying to discover schools and institutions, in a few African countries, that teach game design or games-related courses, as well as acquire their respective syllabi; for feedback to the redesign-team.
My current focus is on these 6 (randomly selected) countries below. Please if you happen to know any institutions or have (maybe) contacts in these countries, who might know, I'd really appreciate your help. And for those who don't have any information, any other constructive input you have is much welcome too. Thank you !!!
- Kenya
- Senegal
- Ghana
- Cameroon
- Uganda
- South Africa
As a sidenote, I know there're alot of institutions in south africa, unlike many other african countries, that teach games-related courses, but due to this volume, I'm rather uncertain of where to start :)
Thank you for all replies and help !!
Twitter Handle: @0_0_MiDE
Thanked by 1dammit
Comments
There are several schools that offer game-related courses, whether it's game design, game art or game programming. Here are the ones that I can think of (in alphabetical order):
City Varsity
Friends of Design
Learn3D
The Open Window Institute
The University of Cape Town
The University of Pretoria ("Tuks") (although I don't think they actually explicitly offer a game-related course, they've got quite a few students who've been involved in doing graphics programming or writing game engines)
The University of the Witwatersrand
I hope that gives you some direction. I'd be really interested to hear what you're hoping to learn from them, and how you're looking to use that information.
NMMU has a games course too I believe.
North West University hosts the Serious Games Institute of South Africa, there must be some sort of study course associated with that.
One of decisions the team made, after looking at the old (2008) framework curriculum, was to pool together existing games-syllabi used in schools and games-educational institutions around the world, to try to get a sense of what was currently being taught today, and the topics that mattered most to people when teaching a games-course. The pool also serves as a research/reference-repository for the team moving forward.
So, actually what the team is after at the moment is, as an approach, talking to the games-lecturers/teachers (in some of these schools) in a bid to acquire the games-syllabi/curricula they use for teaching. Of course, there probably other indirect ways of obtaining the syllabi, but talking directly to the games-teachers themselves, to get a better context of the situation of things in their respective teaching-environs, would be more ideal.
In addition, the area of focus (of the igda curriculum framework redesign) for our particular team is on the 'Game Design (and later on, Interactive Storytelling)' sections of the framework. Other teams are working on other parts of the curriculum framework.
So, while we might be acquiring, from a school/institution, a syllabi for a whole games-program, what we'd be keenly looking at are the 'game design' courses of the program (of course, other aspects of games development ideally inform the game design part; so we won't be looking at things in isolation).
The collection of the teaching-syllabi would serve as a spring board for in-depth discussions, within the team, as well as help in comparisons with the teaching-syllabi in other regions of the world (which some other people on the team are working on acquiring as well).
Though, work just recently started, so it's too early to say, but personally (and barring any constraints) I do believe we will be opening things up for more input than from just 'schools and institutions'(the academia space); ideally reaching out to games industry professionals for input as well.
I hope this helps.