Student Development

It is important to not lose sight of the fact that each and every student is a unique individual, with different abilities, preferences, hopes and dreams. This is the age where they struggle with social acceptance and relationships, and for many if not most students, they see their time here as their last chance to have fun and goof off before they have to join the workforce or suffer through national service.

They're not wrong. It really is important to make friends and relationships before being forced to climb the corporate ladder (hey, I got together with my wife when I was 16). However, it is also important to get a diploma with good grades so that you can get that high-paying job or position in a leading university. The trick is to impress upon the students the importance of learning stuff like programming and systems analysis without belittling their other, very real, concerns. After all, if they have something else on their mind, they wouldn't be able to concentrate on learning.

In my short time here, I have talked to several students about their individual concerns. These include students looking to do something other than IT, various students looking for advice on which specialization to take, and even a student unhappily breaking up with his girlfriend in class. I take all of these issues seriously and I try to listen without judging. If requested, I would give my opinion and advice simply as someone who's a bit older with a bit more experience. I don't pretend to have all the answers, because I don't. But sometimes it is enough just be an authority figure who takes a student's concerns seriously.

Student Projects

I have employed several of the more motivated students over the holidays for various small projects (which are distinct from their FYPs). Other than giving them a bit more pocket money and another line on their resume, it gives them the experience of working on the development of a system and the challenges in keeping oneself motivated in a 9 to 6 job, which is likely to be the kind of job they will end up doing in the future. So far, I have supervised the following projects.

Who Knows?

In August 2013, I hired three students (2 programmers, 1 animator) to create a networked gameshow-type quiz game called Who Knows that is based on the Wits & Wagers game. In this game, a question is asked that has a numerical answer. Each team will make their best guess, and then all the guesses are displayed. Next, each team can allocate 3 chips to any answer(s) they think is the best answer, which is the closest answer without going over the correct answer. You get one point if you guessed the best answer, and one point per chip allocated to the best answer. For the last question, you can allocate all the points you have earned so far in an all-or-nothing bid to win (what I like to call "The YOLO Round").

The game was developed using Gamemaker, which unfortunately was probably the wrong tool for this type of game. This Gamemaker version of Who Knows was used during the 2013 RedCamp.

Over the course of the next few semesters, I hired various students to redevelop the game using HTML5 and PHP, which would make it fully web-based. This new version was used for RedCamps 2014-2016, and is likely to be the RedCamp activity for the Diploma in IT for the foreseeable future. We also started using the system in 2015 in the classroom for the Fundamentals for IT Professionals (FP) module as a team building and bonding activity that also teaches some interesting facts and figures. In fact, we hold a Who Knows Grand Finale event in the last week to mark the end of FP, where each class sends a team of representatives to compete for fun, glory, bragging rights and some modest prizes.

Now, if only I can get some more students to fix the security flaws and administrator interface, we might be able to distribute this to other schools in NP...

Who Knows Grand Finale 2016

Who Knows Credits:

Programmers

- Henry Ng Siong Hock
- Jeremy Choo Wun Ka
- Michael Mui Khoon Leong
- Benjamin Lau Jun Hao
- Roy Lee Jin Hui
- Tan Guan Yu

Artists/Designers

- Loke Dong Wai
- Michael Mui Khoon Leong

Other Projects

- When I first arrived at ICT, I bashed out a console-based common test (CT) timetabling program in a few days that used a simple Squeaky Wheel algorithm. As expected, this program produced a better solution in much less time than the existing manual method. In March 2013, I employed two students to modify the algorithm to handle the allocation of CTs to particular venues, and also invigilator scheduling. However, this system proved too complex for the students, although they did learn something about scheduling algorithms.
- For ICT Open House 2014, I got three students to each develop a retro-style arcade game using Gamemaker for the visitors' enjoyment. During the August 2013 break, they developed a side-scrolling platformer, a 2-player head-to-head shooting game involving dragons, and a vertical shooter. In the process, they learnt how to use Gamemaker and gained an understanding of game design and games programming. Not bad for 3 weeks' work.

Ngee Ann Polytechnic Board Games Club

In case it's not obvious, I'm a bit of a board games nut. I therefore have a vested interest in making sure that the Ngee Ann Polytechnic Board Games Club (NPBGC), which is the student board games CCA, does well. Unfortunately, they have not been keeping up with their duties, and so they have been given their dissolution notice, effective 1 April 2014. My thoughts on how the club can be saved can be found in my blog post.

Is this the end of the club? Will I no longer be able to play games on Monday evenings with my students? Will students continue to believe that all board games are like Monopoly? Stay tuned!

Update: Since I wrote the above, the club has improved by leaps and bounds. They now have an official membership of over 50 members, and everyone seems to be on board with the club's mission to spread the hobby (and not just get together to play games). Best of all, they are officially off probation. :D Here is a list of the blog posts I've made concerning the club:

Update 2: Whoo-hoo! The club is now pretty stable. They are a fixture at the Board Games Zone at the library, where their mission is introduce games to the walk-in students so that they get to experience more than just Monopoly or Jenga. While our membership numbers are not huge, we now have a dedicated set of students who understand the allure and beauty of board games, and are able to evangelize and spread the hobby. Plus I now have a gaming group to play games with every Monday. :)

USA Masterclass

From 11-26 March 2016, I co-led 21 students from the Diplomas of IT and MMA on a study trip to San Francisco and Los Angeles. The students attended a 3-day workshop on User Experience, where they were required to design a new product and convince the instructor why it's a product people should care about. We also made several on-site, including production companies like Tippet Studio and SONY Pictures Animation, tech companies like YouTube, Google and Yahoo!, and learning institutions like Ex'pression College of Digital Media and the University of Southern California. Oh, and we also attended the Game Developers' Conference.

A cheerful bunch about to see the latest in games development at GDC 2016.

We also visited some placed on interest like the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz Island. Of course, we took a day off to go to Disneyland. Because Disneyland.

It was really a fun and educational experience. All the students were well-behaved and enthusiastic to learn about how real-life animation and tech companies work. I had the chance to talk to many of the students one-on-one to advise them on career choices, life goals and other matters that you wouldn't normally have a chance to talk about in the classroom. Plus I also managed to introduce board games to many of the students, which is always a plus.

Other Student-related Activities

- The StrITwise Integrated Camp is a competition where high school students are guided over 3 days to produce a working program based on a given theme, and the best teams as evaluated by a judging panel are given prizes. Judging the entries take time, and during judging the students get bored and restless. Here's where I came in. Leveraging on my unhealthy obsession with board games, I facilitated a half-day board gaming session for the participants of StrITwise 2013. Raucous, rowdy fun was had by all. :)

A StrITwise participant enjoys a game of Incan Gold. His friends don't seem as enthused.

- One problem with the StrITwise Integrated Camp is that there is a push to try something new pretty much every year. In 2016, I advised the Orion SIG, which is a student special interest group that was put in charge of organizing StrITwise, for two events. The first is a Hackathon, and my role here was essentially to listen to the Orion students' ideas and to temper their enthusiasm so that they do not try anything overambitious. They ultimately decided on using PyGame to make a Breakout clone, which was very much doable for the participants while still giving enough room for creativity. The other was the StrITwise main competition, where the participants had to use Gamemaker to make a game prototype. Here, my experience with Gamemaker was useful in making sure that the competition requirements were challenging yet reasonable. Ultimately, the StrITwise events in 2016 were pretty successful.
- For the past two (update: now three) Open Houses, I have facilitated playtesting sessions for Games Programming students. For their first practical assignment, they are given a short time to produce an early prototype of a game. In 2013, groups of 4 students had 3 weeks to produce their prototype using XNA; in 2014, groups of 2 students had 2 weeks to create their prototype using Gamemaker. They then had to come up with advertising posters and playtesting surveys, then get Open House visitors to try out their games and give feedback via the surveys. It's hectic, tiring and actually quite a lot of fun for the students to see people deriving pleasure from playing their own creations. Oh, and we got the visitors to award a star to each game they liked, and the team with the most stars at the end got a prize. :)

Visitors playtesting an early prototype during Open House 2014