What will we do in this class? (and how will we grade you?)

First, I recommend looking at the “What is this class” page, to get an idea of what we want you to learn.

In order to teach you these things, there will be:

• Class lectures and discussions (Monday/Wednesday class meetings). We will try to keep track of attendance and participation.
• Tutorials and project help sessions (generally on Fridays). These will be discussions or hands-on lectures where we try to help you with the projects, and the tools you need to work with. If you can figure things out yourself, these are optional. We will try to make them valuable to everyone.
• Readings. There will be many required readings, and lots of optional ones as well. We will try to confirm that you’ve learned from the readings through class participation and assignments.
• Assignments. These will be things you must do to show that you are learning stuff. More importantly, they will be designed to help you think about what you’re supposed to be learning in the readings and lectures so that you can internalize it better.  Assignments will generally be turned in online – with mechanisms explained with each assignment.
• Projects. Three of them. Of increasing size and difficulty. Each will require you to make a game. This is the main piece of the class. Each project will have a number of sub-parts (generally, there is something due every week). Projects will be done in assigned groups of various sizes (see the discussion of groups). Projects will also have individual components (generally asking you to reflect on the group work).

Grading:

Grading (or evaluating) is the least fun part of teaching (for me at least). In the past, most people taking this class have been sufficiently dedicated that its clear that everyone deserves (and receives) a good grade.

Given the diversity of experience in this class, assigning grades fairly is a challenge. People who are experienced programmers will learn different things (and produce different outcomes) than those who are less experienced. Our goal is to reward people for successfully learning new things.

There is no set mechanism to determine the grade. Each part can affect every other part. If you never show up to class, you will get a bad grade even if your projects are awesome. If you are quiet in class, you might make up for it by participating in online discussions and doing the assignments well. If your project doesn’t turn out the way you’d like, you might make up for it by discussing what you would have learned from it in your “reflection” discussion, …

But overall, the graded components are:

• Projects. We’ll evaluate the checkpoints, as well as the final results. We’ll grade what the group turns in as well as individual pieces (generally, each project will have a “reflection” exercise) done individually.
• Assignments. We’ll keep score to make sure everyone does everything. For some, we’ll just check to make sure you do them. (even if its check/no-check, we’ll note exceptional or unacceptable performance). For others, we’ll provide more detailed feedback.
• Participation. We’ll keep score of who shows up, and try to make sure that people are really participating mentally as well as physically.