Professor Pocket Teaches FFX, Part Two
Jan. 23rd, 2017 01:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingTomorrow is my first class about Final Fantasy X ahhhhhhhhhhhh
ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhh
I am so not ready haha.
The syllabus is finished and posted in several places, and after work this evening I'll print out physical copies for the students at a copy shop. I've already uploaded most of the assigned readings to the course site on Blackboard, and I traded favors with a friend who promised to send me pirated copies of the rest by the end of the day today.
(But why doesn't she just ask the university library and/or Interlibrary Loan to scan the readings?? you might be thinking. The answer is that I did, and they did a remarkably shitty job. As someone dating a university librarian, I'm not going to say that university libraries are useless, but they could do a lot better in certain regards.)
In any case, the course has a full enrollment of 25 students, and I intend to overload anyone who shows up and asks to be added to the class. The more the merrier, right? For what it's worth, 10 of the 25 students seem to be female, although some of them have Chinese and Korean names that could go either way.
The class meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I've structured it so that we will talk about industry history, Japanese culture, and game design theory on Tuesdays, and on Thursdays we will apply this information to FFX. In terms of assignments, this means that students will be asked to read academic articles and book chapters for Tuesday classes, and they will need to have played FFX up to a designated point by the beginning of class on Thursday.
FFX is extremely well written and has excellent pacing, and it lends itself to division into "chapters" of relatively even length. It actually wasn't that difficult to figure out that students should play "until the morning after the Djose Temple" and "until you wake up in the Sanubia Desert" and so on. The kids should be in the Calm Lands by spring break, and they will have beaten the game at the end of the first week of April.
Something that is true of all undergraduate students everywhere in the world is that there are a lot of demands on their time, and they often have to make difficult decisions regarding what assignments they are and are not able to complete. I understand that playing a video game can feel as if it's not work, which means that many students may procrastinate if they're not given an incentive to treat these "reading" assignments as serious coursework. I'm therefore planning on giving written quizzes on FFX at the beginning of class every Thursday, which should be fun.
(I suppose I could reproduce those quizzes here if anyone reading this is interested.)
A friend of mine who teaches at a university in Australia has been thinking of developing a course like this, and he asked me a good question regarding a practical concern, namely, what happens if students get stuck? At the boss fight with Seymour on Mount Gagazet, for example?
In my own experience, dealing with the difficulty curve in FFX is mostly a matter of level grinding. One of the reasons I chose this game is because it's fairly easy – and because it has a minimum of level grinding. I took the major hikes in difficulty into account in the syllabus, and I'm going to do my best to alert the students to potential problem areas in advance. I also put PDF copies of two strategy guides up on the course website on Blackboard, and I'm planning on including links to a number of fan-written online guides as well.
From what I understand, the way that other instructors teaching games have handled the issue of difficulty is to pair students up or put them into groups of mixed skill levels so that they can help each other out. When I was an undergraduate, however, I worked well over 40 hours a week at multiple jobs, and I think there is a special place in hell for college professors who assign mandatory recurring group work. The university where I'm teaching this class has a fairly high number of nontraditional students (a few of the ones enrolled in my class are already professional game devs), so I don't think something like that would work there anyway.
If I had better library or media lab support, I would consider scheduling something like a "lab" for class, meaning that I would book a room for a certain number of hours a week where my students could play the assigned texts together. If I were assigning multiple games instead of just one, I think this would be an ideal scenario, and it's something I might consider if I have an opportunity to teach a class like this again.
The one thing I'm really worried about is that I will have one or more Final Fantasy Experts™ in the class, by which I mean people who are obsessed with game trivia. I've played FFX five times, and I will play it again along with the students, but I don't remember all the tiny details of the game perfectly, and there are other Final Fantasy games I've only played once or twice, like FFVIII and FFXIII. I don't want to try to pass myself off as some sort of authority on the series, but I do need to act as a moderator and as an administrator, and I hope I will be able to maintain a friendly atmosphere while still commanding at least a small degree of respect. I know this is something that probably no female professional has ever struggled with before, so wish me luck lol.
ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhh
I am so not ready haha.
The syllabus is finished and posted in several places, and after work this evening I'll print out physical copies for the students at a copy shop. I've already uploaded most of the assigned readings to the course site on Blackboard, and I traded favors with a friend who promised to send me pirated copies of the rest by the end of the day today.
(But why doesn't she just ask the university library and/or Interlibrary Loan to scan the readings?? you might be thinking. The answer is that I did, and they did a remarkably shitty job. As someone dating a university librarian, I'm not going to say that university libraries are useless, but they could do a lot better in certain regards.)
In any case, the course has a full enrollment of 25 students, and I intend to overload anyone who shows up and asks to be added to the class. The more the merrier, right? For what it's worth, 10 of the 25 students seem to be female, although some of them have Chinese and Korean names that could go either way.
The class meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I've structured it so that we will talk about industry history, Japanese culture, and game design theory on Tuesdays, and on Thursdays we will apply this information to FFX. In terms of assignments, this means that students will be asked to read academic articles and book chapters for Tuesday classes, and they will need to have played FFX up to a designated point by the beginning of class on Thursday.
FFX is extremely well written and has excellent pacing, and it lends itself to division into "chapters" of relatively even length. It actually wasn't that difficult to figure out that students should play "until the morning after the Djose Temple" and "until you wake up in the Sanubia Desert" and so on. The kids should be in the Calm Lands by spring break, and they will have beaten the game at the end of the first week of April.
Something that is true of all undergraduate students everywhere in the world is that there are a lot of demands on their time, and they often have to make difficult decisions regarding what assignments they are and are not able to complete. I understand that playing a video game can feel as if it's not work, which means that many students may procrastinate if they're not given an incentive to treat these "reading" assignments as serious coursework. I'm therefore planning on giving written quizzes on FFX at the beginning of class every Thursday, which should be fun.
(I suppose I could reproduce those quizzes here if anyone reading this is interested.)
A friend of mine who teaches at a university in Australia has been thinking of developing a course like this, and he asked me a good question regarding a practical concern, namely, what happens if students get stuck? At the boss fight with Seymour on Mount Gagazet, for example?
In my own experience, dealing with the difficulty curve in FFX is mostly a matter of level grinding. One of the reasons I chose this game is because it's fairly easy – and because it has a minimum of level grinding. I took the major hikes in difficulty into account in the syllabus, and I'm going to do my best to alert the students to potential problem areas in advance. I also put PDF copies of two strategy guides up on the course website on Blackboard, and I'm planning on including links to a number of fan-written online guides as well.
From what I understand, the way that other instructors teaching games have handled the issue of difficulty is to pair students up or put them into groups of mixed skill levels so that they can help each other out. When I was an undergraduate, however, I worked well over 40 hours a week at multiple jobs, and I think there is a special place in hell for college professors who assign mandatory recurring group work. The university where I'm teaching this class has a fairly high number of nontraditional students (a few of the ones enrolled in my class are already professional game devs), so I don't think something like that would work there anyway.
If I had better library or media lab support, I would consider scheduling something like a "lab" for class, meaning that I would book a room for a certain number of hours a week where my students could play the assigned texts together. If I were assigning multiple games instead of just one, I think this would be an ideal scenario, and it's something I might consider if I have an opportunity to teach a class like this again.
The one thing I'm really worried about is that I will have one or more Final Fantasy Experts™ in the class, by which I mean people who are obsessed with game trivia. I've played FFX five times, and I will play it again along with the students, but I don't remember all the tiny details of the game perfectly, and there are other Final Fantasy games I've only played once or twice, like FFVIII and FFXIII. I don't want to try to pass myself off as some sort of authority on the series, but I do need to act as a moderator and as an administrator, and I hope I will be able to maintain a friendly atmosphere while still commanding at least a small degree of respect. I know this is something that probably no female professional has ever struggled with before, so wish me luck lol.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-24 02:12 am (UTC)If I were still in college I would 1000% take this class.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-25 02:52 pm (UTC)After the first day, I have a full enrollment of 25 students. They all seem to be fairly experienced gamers, and they're all good kids. Surprisingly, only five of them have ever played FFX before, and only two of them picked up FFXV. I know this is a small group of people, but I'm a little worried that Final Fantasy is becoming irrelevant. That can't be the case... right??
no subject
Date: 2017-01-26 05:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-30 09:18 pm (UTC)I've enjoyed the FF fic you've been posting recently, by the way. Please keep up the good work, because I LOVE YOUR WRITING.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-31 04:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-24 02:59 am (UTC)Just wondering, if a student says they're just going to watch Let's Plays FFX instead of playing, or they don't say it but you suspect that that's what they're doing, what will your response be? Or what if they're just reading/watching summaries?
no subject
Date: 2017-01-25 02:31 pm (UTC)Students are expected to complete all required reading assignments and to be engaged and attentive during class lectures and discussions. In addition, each student must have played through Final Fantasy X up to the point specified on the syllabus. Although it is acceptable to play the game as a group or watch "let's play" videos, each student is ultimately responsible for becoming familiar with the digital text, including its gameplay elements.
Some people prefer to watch LP videos or read LP summaries, and that's totally fine with me. As long as they can keep up in class and do okay on the quizzes, the students can "play" the game however they want. I did caution them that there is a major time commitment involved, and that they probably won't be able to switch from watching videos to actually playing the game halfway through the semester. Although, I mean, they're still young. They probably pull all-nighters with games all the time anyway...
no subject
Date: 2017-01-30 08:45 am (UTC)