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Having received many queries from educators in regards to accreditation for their degree(s), I have decided to try to tackle the question. There are many reasons why there should be some type of accreditation. Equally there is discussion about how time consuming, costly and difficult the accreditation process is to establish and achieve. I have only gone through accreditation as a faculty member writing various reports, however, I do recall that it is a very stressful and exhaustive process for departments as well as the institution. Another consideration is that our particular genre, being interdisciplinary, has other factors that may govern components of our curricula. There are of course those that feel that there should not be game degrees at all, or at least not until graduate school.
Accrediting bodies in the United States operate to ensure that students in educational programs receive an education consistent with standards for entry into practice in their respective fields or disciplines. I have received several reports from educators that there are many game programs popping up all over the world – to primarily cash in on the boom. How do we protect students from these types of academic vultures who grab the money and give students little in the way of academic value?
What if we were to develop something as simple as IGDA APPROVED? Establishing basic criteria based on our developing curriculum framework. Something like this I can imagine, as it would have minimal guidelines that would allow for institutional autonomy and innovation. With a full-blown accreditation process, what benefits do you see that would outweigh the cost, time and effort? Which then begs me to ask, who should be the governing body that assess the quality of a specialized game education degree? As a SIG, we are run by volunteers, with no current need to have a budget. Accreditation would necessitate the need for a budget and a lot more work for volunteers above what I feel individuals could comfortably be asked to give. But who else would be qualified to create or stipulate what is considered the standards?
We also must factor in variables such as the multiple types of institutions involved in our SIG. I would like the membership to weigh in, as this topic remains very difficult for me to come to any clear decision. I would very much like to hear from our membership, especially those from outside the US. I would very much like to hear how this may or may not benefit them in their own countries. To me, I feel that the SIG should concern itself with teaching and learning as the primary focus. I ask you, does that ultimately result in setting standards?
Prof. Susan Gold
Chair, IGDA Education SIG
Accrediting bodies in the United States operate to ensure that students in educational programs receive an education consistent with standards for entry into practice in their respective fields or disciplines. I have received several reports from educators that there are many game programs popping up all over the world – to primarily cash in on the boom. How do we protect students from these types of academic vultures who grab the money and give students little in the way of academic value?
What if we were to develop something as simple as IGDA APPROVED? Establishing basic criteria based on our developing curriculum framework. Something like this I can imagine, as it would have minimal guidelines that would allow for institutional autonomy and innovation. With a full-blown accreditation process, what benefits do you see that would outweigh the cost, time and effort? Which then begs me to ask, who should be the governing body that assess the quality of a specialized game education degree? As a SIG, we are run by volunteers, with no current need to have a budget. Accreditation would necessitate the need for a budget and a lot more work for volunteers above what I feel individuals could comfortably be asked to give. But who else would be qualified to create or stipulate what is considered the standards?
We also must factor in variables such as the multiple types of institutions involved in our SIG. I would like the membership to weigh in, as this topic remains very difficult for me to come to any clear decision. I would very much like to hear from our membership, especially those from outside the US. I would very much like to hear how this may or may not benefit them in their own countries. To me, I feel that the SIG should concern itself with teaching and learning as the primary focus. I ask you, does that ultimately result in setting standards?
Prof. Susan Gold
Chair, IGDA Education SIG
posted by IGDA Education SIG at 5:06 PM
5 Comments:
Accreditation is for fields that feel they need to police their disciplinary boundaries (i.e. preserve the economic advantages to institutions on the "inside" and/or require orthodoxy with respect to established competencies): business and engineering schools come to mind. This hardly seems to be appropriate for us at this point.
I'm a bit skeptical about an "IGDA Approved" label as well. We would then have interests on all sides waging war on exactly what the criteria would be. There just isn't enough consensus about the field at this point.
Accreditation is not just valuable for institutions on the 'inside' - it can also be useful for students. That is why accreditation programmes are often useful.
Here in the UK the industry has worked with the government body Skillset to accredit courses. I suspect a review of this would be useful for anyone considering setting up an IGDA equivalent.
See: http://www.skillset.org/games/
Perhaps one should first ask "what is required, what is taught, and to how many people". I am in the interested position that a possible publisher for my Game Design Books, as text books, wants this sort of information, because they need it to make a decision on textbook publication. I was able to find a list of game design programs around the world, but 'what courses?' and 'what enrollment?' is more challenging.
Fortunately, I also have a unique resource, that would support answering this question. My university (WPI) has a uniform undergraduate graduation requirement, the Interactive Qualifying Project (IQP). It is basically a Junior Year thesis (group work is allowed) that parallels the Senior year disciplinary thesis requirement.
The objective of the IQP is to force students to confront an interaction between technology and society. It would be entirely possible to recruit students to go forth, collect the requirements and courses and etc. for a very large number of programs, do cluster analysis to identify groups of degrees that are similar in content as oppose to having the same name, and identify what our current practices are.
Please speak up if you find this interesting.
George Phillies
phillies@wpi.edu
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