First year students, many without any experience in higher education, will not always grasp how to manage their chosen course. As a lecturer you may start with explaining things to them f2f, but there is another way, and it stems from computer games. It is called a Walkthrough.
A Walkthrough is a fan made strategy guide for a specific computer game, which walks you through the game level by level. Since todays commercial games often are quite complex, a Walkthrough can be a helpful tool to find your way through the various levels. In the same way a Walkthrough can guide a bewildered first year student through the various stages of your course.
In the spring of 2015 I was responsible for SPO1510 – Gaming Culture, a course that was part of 1th year bachelor’s degree program in Game and experience technology, at Nord-Trondelag University College. I used flipped classroom and tried to focus on discussions on various topics and the obligatory tasks that the students had to deliver as part of their portfolio. Since the class consisted of quite a number of Icelandic students, all lecturing and lecture resources was in English.
I decided to explain the course and the focus on portfolio work by giving them a written Walkthrough, designed the same way as a computer game Walkthrough. I divided the course, or rather course work, in seven acts and all with one objective.
The Walkthrough can be viewed here.
