Points
Up to 100
Abstract
This assignment requires to craft a paper exploring a current trend in games and/or play.The target audience is the students in this W350 course.
Prerequisites
– Must have completed all L1 Assignments
– Teacher Topic Approval
– Must be peer-reviewed
Completion
To complete this assignment, students, working in pairs or as a group of three, need to write a 500 – 750 word paper exploring a current trend related to games, rhetoric, and play. The paper should include support from 3 quality sources.
Diamond Reward
Students who successfully complete this assignment will receive +2 diamonds.
Assignment Description
The ability to recognize, identify, and summarize current trends in research, products, practices, and the like is a highly valued skill set. Additionally, presenting that information to others, and doing it effectively, is even more valuable as professional communication skills remain the number one trait sought by today’s employers. This assignment, then, is designed to let students explore current trends in relation to rhetoric, play, and games (culture/industry) and to do so as an attempt to develop their abilities to identify, synthesize, and convey critical and current information to a target audience. In this case, the audience is a students peers in the w350 course.
The task here is to identify a current issue or “hot topic” for games studies, gaming industry, rhetoric and games, games and learning, rhetoric and play, play and culture, and so on and to explore some of the implications of that focus. In so doing, students should offer a view on what is at stake in the current issue/trend, what the core matter is, and how that might impact the frames of inquiry we have explored so far in our course.
Guidelines
Student presentational topics must be approved. To be approved, students will need to address the following questions and share those answers with the instructor for discussion:
- What is the current trend or issue?
- What sources (scholarly, gaming, or otherwise) helped you identify this trend (should indicate at least 3 quality sources)?
- Why does this trend matter? To you? To our class? To culture (gaming or popular)?
- Can the trend be seen in any gaming platforms? (i.e., Are there any examples you can show?)
Papers should be typed, double-spaced using a 12pt Cambria or Times New Roman font.
Evaluation
These papers will be graded first and foremost on their overall written quality. But they will also be assessed (1) in terms of their ability to develop and present key ideas in a way relevant to the audience, (2) the depth of engagement offered within the word count restrictions, (3) the ability to control issues of clarity and representation, and (4) the ability to situate the impact and connection of the topic to the target audience.
Goals
The goal of this assignment is to help students think about the expository process, to focus on idea development and a reasoned movement through those ideas. It is important to understand this exposition as a rhetorical act, bound up with various layers of practice and critically informed (infused) by the target audience.
Instant Completion
2 Diamonds
Rhetoric, Play, & Games 