2C. New Course Proposal

Due: November 13th, 2024 (by start of class)

Weight: 25% of final grade

Medium: Any

Stream: Game Pedagogy

Overview

So, you are interested in thinking about how games might work in an educational context?

Your goal for this assignment will be to write the syllabus of a potential new course you design from scratch, at any level and on any topic, as long as it engages with games or game-based learning.

Your course can be history centred:

• what would a Canadian history class look like if it involved game-based learning, or

• a history of India through the material culture of games

or can be game centred:

• a history of LARPing

• Games of the Renaissance

Required Materials

1. Course information: course title, level and department, est. enrollment, necessary prerequisites and a short catalog description (~50 words).

2. Rationale (250-500 words, but more if needed) how the proposed class will teach our course themes. You should clearly articulate why games or game-based learning suits your proposed course. You should not explicitly how and why your course differs from or resembles other courses/ syllabi you read.

3. Syllabus. Your syllabus must be complete, including lecture titles and specific readings and assignments. The syllabus should be lightly annotated to explain or justify the choices you are making.

   1. We will take a 12 week course to be the standard model, meeting 3 hours each week. If you want to design a condensed course, micro-credential or prepare a syllabus for the Mini Course Program, please get approval from the professor in advance.

   2. Your syllabus must be the product of reading, research and comparison of existing courses.

   3. Annotations can be marginal comments (in Word or Google Doc files) or hypothes.is annotations for webpages. If using Obsidian, they can be comments in { } brackets. Please note at the outset of your work, how I can read the annotations.

4. Bibliography. You must offer a bibliography that records the readings assigned in your course, as well as the syllabi consulted. If you use online sources, please provide links to the works consulted.

For this project, you will have to find, gather and reflect on syllabi written by instructors in History and related disciplines here at Carleton or at other institutions, but your syllabus should be entirely your own design. You must carefully choose appropriate readings and assignments, and you must also consider how to incorporate the history of games/ game based learning. You must justify and explain your choices in the rationale and annotations.

Instead of a university course, you could also think about creating a schedule and detailed plan for building a course for the Enriched Mini-Course Program which hosts students in grade 8-11 for a week-long compressed course in May.