Participation (Every Class Meeting)
This is not a drill-and-skill type of course. I expect everyone to be involved in class discussions, which are extremely important for critical thinking. You must contribute to class discussions. Fifteen or 18 percent (18% for 5000-level students) of your grade is based on participation.
In-class participation means you are ready to be called on at any time to respond to a question, prompt, and/ or suggestion about the course material. Yes, I will call on you in class periodically, so be prepared to demonstrate that you’re reflecting thoughtfully on the readings. Thoughtful reflection doesn’t mean you give THE answer; instead, it means you show awareness for the complexity of our subject by describing your interpretation or asking questions that demonstrate critical thinking (as opposed to certainty). We embrace ambiguity in this course.
Additional-class participation means you respond to questions, prompts, and/or suggestions about the course material without being called on.
Merely showing up will not get you participation credit—you must engage the course materials. If you’re not in class, you can’t receive credit, so your participation grade will be affected. I will note your participation (or lack thereof) daily. Thoughtful participation means that you engage critically in our discussions or ask engaging questions about the subject. Simply making quips or responding that you like or dislike something does not warrant thoughtful participation. Doing work for another class or distracting other students will lower your participation grade—even to the point of falling below 15% (meaning, you can have a negative participation grade).
Please see me ASAP if you’re concerned about your participation grade because you’re shy or if you don’t understand these requirements. Telling me at the end of April that you didn’t participate because you’re the quiet type or because you didn’t understand what “thoughtful” meant will be too late. The purpose of discussions is for students to have control over their own learning and to reinforce critical thinking generally and dialogic exchange of ideas specifically. I am willing to provide a quasi-alternative to supplement a student’s participation grade, but please note that discussion, which allows speakers to exchange ideas, is an extremely important component of critical thinking. Alternative assignments are rare and based solely on my discretion.
Canvas Prompts
I will have prompts related to our readings and class discussions. In order to foster your understanding of the course material and theories, I want you to interact with other classmates through writing (we’ll do plenty of speaking in class, but feel free to talk about these ideas with your classmates outside of class). Each week, I’ll ask you to respond to a prompt I provide by Friday at 11:00 pm. Set those weekly reminders now. I’ll have these Discussion prompts on Canvas.
Posting or responding in uncritical ways–ways that don’t rise to the level of a 4000/5000-level course–will affect your grade. So will not responding in at least 250 words. All citations are in addition to the 250-word reflections–no padding your response with long quotations.
What is American Culture? Essay (Final Due 2/17)
As you read and participate in class discussions, consider video games as products of culture. This semester, we’ll identify cultural values and how video games reflect these values. For this essay, you should define American Culture by explaining some prevailing values. How many? It’s not about quantity. You shouldn’t just list or state the values. You must describe (make an argument for) why you feel those values are part of a culture. You could do a fine job on one value, but two or three related values would also be a valid approach. Imagine someone asking you, “what’s the essence of American culture?” This would be your response.
I do not expect you to go into a tremendous amount of technical or historical detail in your essays; instead, try to pick a value that might fit our discussions regarding American values in general. Although we might all agree that a particular value (e.g., individualism) is an American value, you must offer support for such a claim—you can’t just state it.
After you identify and describe the values, you must describe how those values are located or embodied in the American culture. You may use “I” and even bring in personal examples, but you have to defend your reasons for arguing the way you do. Below are the format logistics (I don’t take off for formatting, but I am always asked about formatting so…):
- Typed, double spaced (except heading), 12 pt font
- 1-inch margins all around
- Page numbers (anywhere)
- A title other than “What is American Culture?”
- At least five (5) pages; at least six (6) pages for 5000-level students
- In-text citations: you must use quotations from the course reading and, if you choose, outside reading
- Works Cited/References page (I don’t care which style–MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.–you use for your paper, but please choose one)
Over the course of the semester, the above ideas should make more sense. You’ll have a chance to workshop these essays and revise. Please start thinking about American Culture and identify values. You’ll workshop this on 2/10/2022 (Google Docs) and turn it in via Canvas on 2/17/2022.
Please don’t email me a draft and say “look at this.” Office hours are Tuesdays & Thursdays 4:00-5:00 pm and by appt (Zoom is preferred). If you’re wondering if one particular value over another would be better suited, please ask, and I’ll offer some advice.
You will need to cite our readings, but I also expect this to have some personality. Late essays will start at 50%.
Video Game Essay (New Due Date: 4/07)
Using a theoretical lens, a blend of lenses, or just a smart perspective you must analyze a video game (or games). You may do a rhetorical analysis where you explain how meaning is conveyed in the game or compare meaning across games. The most straightforward approach is to pick a video game (or related video games) and set out to explain what makes the video game a product of the culture from which it comes.
Alternatively, you could analyze games from one of the analysis types we discussed in Understanding Video Games (Table 1, p. 11)–looking at gaming communities or gamers themselves is appropriate for research. As you know, we focus more on rhetorical and cultural analyses, but there are other analyses you may do. In order not to bite off more than you can chew, I suggest not analyzing gamers playing games. To do such an analysis properly, you would need to interview gamers, record their game play, and transcribe hours of data. You could analyze gaming discussions that you find online or focus on a vlogger’s “walkthrough” of a game (YouTube has 1000s of these). There is plenty of background research—mostly case studies—on video gamers, so, if this is the approach you’d like to do, do your research early.
Remember, you don’t have to have played the game to focus on a segment of the narrative (or game play). YouTube has so much game play recorded, so, if you’re not agile enough to get through a game, you may watch game play and analyze that. Remember, the YouTube video and the video game itself are both cultural products…
Possible Topics
- Cultural Studies: this/these game/s reflect culture–why and how
- Controversies and/or Scapegoating
- Economics: Capitalism, Neoliberalism, eSports, Making money
- Fandom
- Reddit discussions
- Mods
- Wikis (Fallout‘s Nukapedia is one I frequent)
- Gender Analyses
- Graphics and/or technological developments
- How games incorporate pop culture references
- Mini-histories of a genre (war games, adventure games, Zelda, Mario, etc.)
- Nationalism and Propaganda
- Psychoanalysis
- Racial Stereotypes
- Systematic Review of Literature
- Pick a field and an academic journal or two and review the research (a time period could help)
- Popular news reporting on video games (again, a time period would help: 1990s, early 2000s, etc.)
- See Ch. 9 for behavioral psychological meta-analyses
Regardless of your approach, you are not summarizing. You are doing a critical analysis and making sound arguments about the meaning(s) of a game.
These will be workshopped on 3/17 and are due 4/07 on Canvas. Format this the way an essay should be formatted and make sure it is at least 7 pages (9 for 5000-level students). It requires research outside of the class reading, and you will also need to cite our readings (yes, and readings not assigned), so make sure you do that. If you don’t cite—use in-text citations—any of our readings or outside research, I’ll tell you to do it over. Therefore, your essay will be late, and all late essays start at 50%.
Did I mention that you aren’t supposed to summarize the games: you interpret them or explain their significance culturally, historically, or clinically.
Here are the requirements for your 3/18* drafts
*Change from the syllabus.
- Typed, double spaced (except heading), 12 pt font
- 1-inch margins all around
- Page numbers (anywhere)
- A title other than “Video Game Essay”
- At least four (4) pages; at least six (6) pages for 5000-level students
- Page requirements DO NOT include Works Cited or References Sections
- In-text citations: you must use quotations from the course reading AND outside reading
- Yes, you must do research. Fortunately, your primary sources (the video game itself, blog/vlog posts, community boards, etc.) count as research!
- Works Cited/References page (I don’t care which style–MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.–you use for your paper, but please choose one)
- For this draft, you can (and should) include sources you don’t cite but possibly will in your final draft.
- Consider this more of a Bibliography
Multimodal Project (Due 4/28-5/09)*
*This is now worth 200 points because I’m combining it with the Final Presentation, so it’s just one assignment.
You have many options for this assignment. Basically, you will make an argument using new media. You have lots of freedom to work with visuals, video, or audio in any way you’d like. Consider creating a project that reflects or is inspired by something from this course. Instead of rigid guidelines, I want you to have plenty of room for experimentation. I’m just looking to see how the course reading inspired you to communicate in a form other than a traditional academic essay. This may (and probably should) be related to your Video Game Essay assignment.
You don’t need to be an editing guru to do this. You can easily create a project using a program like Video Editor, which is a standard program for Microsoft Windows. Using text, images, videos, and F/X, make an argument. I will show you a few examples (I hope), but I’m not concerned with how well-edited this is. I’m concerned with your argument.
You have plenty of possible ways you can do this assignments. A video would be a good choice (example–way too long for your model). Just make sure I can play the project, and please have citations (URLs and such) for the material you get online. Yes, you MUST cite our readings, so your last frames (or final frames) will have citations from our readings and the material you use from outside of class.
New information on the combined assignments:
- This should be at least 3 minutes and loses it’s potential for quality after 5 minutes.
- Just as you shouldn’t pad your essays with long quotations, don’t allow unnecessarily long videos to pad these projects.
- The goal is to select an appropriate topic (perhaps related to your Video Game Essay) for the time.
- Be creative but don’t worry about technical perfection–I don’t expect you to be professional videographers or seasoned vloggers…remember Frogger (1981)?
- Don’t forget about the citation requirements: Works Cited or References.
Final Presentation (Due 5/09)
*This is no longer required because it’s combined with the above Multimodal Project.
You will do a 4 to 5-minute presentation on your Multimodal Project. This presentation will be during our Final Exam Time, May 9, 2022 (or uploaded by that date). Don’t go under 4 minutes, and don’t go over 5 minutes. We’ll discuss these projects later in the semester.