Overview
Your final grade is made up of two major components, homework assignments, and a
project. The weighting of these components is described below.
Students are expected to do their own work at all times and to follow the
university's codes of academic conduct and honor code. Cases of suspected
collaboration or cheating will be immediately forwarded to the Dean of Student
Affairs, and will be pursued to resolution. This is an unpleasant process for
all involved, so please do not put yourself in this situation.
Grading is determined by a term-long accumulation of points,
weighed in percentage as stated for each component as summarized below. Determinations
of the individual category breakdowns will be determined by looking for gaps
or clumps in the final averages. Note that the weighting between project, homeworks
and final exams is such that you are unlikely to get an A if you ignore any
part of the class.
Homework Assignments
The regular homework assignments will be substantive and you will have about
a week to do them. I anticipate giving around three of these. These regular
homeworks will be worth 10% of your grade. Individual values will be determined
later.
Project
One term-long game design project will be given in this course. The project
will be broken down into five parts (assignments), each around two to four weeks
in duration. Each of these assignments is worth between 10% and 15% of your
final grade. The project will have you develop a game. The assignments will
have you specify a game, design it, build it, and evaluate it. The material
which you turn in should be presented professionally, and should stress grammatical
correctness and clarity. It will be submitted on paper, with a PDF or HTML version
and any supplementary material on the Web. You will be judged on your originality,
innovativeness, quality of writing, and correctness. Further details will accompany
each assignment.
Final Exam
The final exam will cover the lecture materials and the readings in the textbook.
I expect you to have a basic grasp of these materials and of all parts of your
project. You should be familiar with what went on in each aspect of your project.
Experiment Participation
My research group may be doing user interface evaluation experiments this
term, and
we may need participants. We will "pay" each student who
participates as a subject in our experiments 2 percentage points on the term's
mark. Credit for participation in an experiment can only be applied to one
class.
Summary
Below is presented the weight of the different course components toward your
final grade.
Component | Weight | |
Experiment Participation | 2% | |
HWs | 10% | |
Project part 1 - Game Proposal + Design Sketch | 10% | |
Project part 2 - Design Specification + Interim Report | 12% | |
Project part 3 - Minimum Target Progress Report | 15% | |
Project part 4 - Alpha Release | 15% | |
Project part 5 - Playtesting and Final Paper | 13% |
|
Midterm | 10% | |
Final Exam | 15% |