GAMES:EDU

One of the things we're aiming to do with Games:EDU in future is develop greater engagement between the audience and the speakers. Question and answer sessions at the end of talks are fine, but this time we thought we'd also have workshops.

Jonathan Purdy (University of Hull), John Sear (University of Derby), Steven Yau (EA), and Gregor White (University of Abertay Dundee) handled the workshops each giving a short presentation then splitting the audiences up for group discussions.

Steven Yau was a former student at Hull, and gave a presentation about the job hunt that led him through a Master's degree and eventually to EA.

John Sear spoke about the projects they'd done with students, running small groups as imaginary game studios, but putting them under the same pressures. Late changes to projects, firings, even studio closures, the team at Derby have a great deal of fun with the students. Talk of this carried on into the workshops, with one of the main points coming out of it about planning: Such measures are carefully planned at Derby, but introducing them late to a course creates more problems than valuable experience.