Curricula

Objectives

The object of the Side Quest is to take your game development and related superpowers and put them into practice! The Side Quest is either a personal project directed for deepening your skill set or a customer-oriented project – in each case the endgame is to add a meaningful enhancement into your professional portfolio.

The object is to recognize your existing skill-set and think of your future practical training and job-seeking: What kind of competences will you want to showcase in your portfolio? What are the areas of your expertise you would like to practice and dive deeper into?

Course competences
Operating in a workplace: You understand the complexity of changing working life and your own resilience in changing working life situations.
Proactive development: You can work in projects in cooperation with actors of different fields.
Cross-disciplinary competence in games: You can apply skills and knowledge in a special field of game production, development or design, or other field of study with link to digital games
Game production competence: You can produce content for a game project and can work with the tools in meaningful and systematic way.

The learning objectives of the course:
After completing the course, you will have a better understanding of your own work placement goals. You will also learn how to define clear-cut goals and a suitable scope for a development project. You will also strengthen your superpowers required for producing the project as well as learn about organizing and documenting your own work.

Content

In the Side Quest you will plan, execute, report and self-evaluate a project of your choice. The project should be related to your own superpowers and competences related to the goals of the BIT degree programme. The project can be a personal or a customer-oriented project. The course will be credited on the basis of how many working-hours you do towards the completion of the project. You can also conduct multiple projects for the course, as long as you have credits left on the course.

Time and location

Nonstop, independent of time or place.

Learning materials and recommended literature

The student chooses relevant sources of information, depending on the topic of the project. Instructions for planning and reporting are provided in Moodle.

Teaching methods

The Side Quest must be related to game industry core competences, but the content of the projects is not limited to only game projects. For example, if the students core skills are related to graphic design, a graphic design project related to marketing can be accepted. If the student is unsure if their project fits the course, they will contact the teacher in charge, who will guide with selecting suitable project content.

The purpose of the Side Quest is for the student to conduct an individual project in the field of their own superpower to enhance their portfolio. Enrollment to the course is non-stop, and the project may be started at any point, providing that the student has advanced level understanding of their chosen project.

The Side Quest is conducted independently and there will be no guidance in the practical implementation. The guidance for the completion of the project is given via the following methods:
- Project Plan
- Project Report
- Presentation of the Project

The project may be conducted for a customer, or for the students own project.

Practical training and working life connections

The objective of the Side Quest is to add to the students portfolio material and aid the student in their job-seeking for Practical Training and work after graduation. Therefore, the student must acquaint themselves with what kind of products the companies in the field are producing, and how their own portfolio will reflect the working-life.

Student workload

Side Quest will be tracked by used hours for the project. 1 ECTS credit equals 27 hours of work.
Minimum project length is 2 ECTS (54 hours), but desired projects should be 5-10 credits (135-270 hours).

Students must schedule a weekly working rhythm and provide milestones for their project during the planning phase. Students are responsible for their own schedule.

Further information for students

The Side Quest is evaluated as Pass/Fail, the student will receive a passing mark when the planned work has been completed, and all the necessary documentation has been delivered. Students must self-evaluate in the project report and discuss their successes and what skills they should improve next.

Evaluation scale

Pass/Fail

Evaluation criteria, pass/failed

The assessment is based on learning objectives and quality, and self-evaluation by the student. The learning outcomes are assessed in relation to the objectives set in the project plan.

Prerequisites

Although this course can take on new technical or content-related skills, you must still have basic understanding of project management, game business, and the advanced understanding of the technologies you select.

Further information

The content of the project is quite open, as long as it is related to your own competences and the goals of the BIT degree programme. In practice this means that for example a 2D-artist may participate in a project where they create 2D-content outside of game development, or for example a student focusing on marketing can find a marketing project outside of the realm of digital games. If you are unsure if your project idea fits the course, you should discuss it with the teacher in charge of the current implementation.