AGS workshops

[Wesray]

Hi everyone!

I'm currently busy organizing an AGS workshop which will take place at my university next Thursday. I'm about to finalize the program, but I thought it might be a good idea to get some feedback from the community. Perhaps some of you have done something like this before.  Even if not, you might have good ideas what to include in future workshops.

Let me first outline the situation. I teach computer science classes at an Austrian university. During the last few years I have also been involved in programs that aim to spark interest for technical studies in pupils approaching graduation. During these events I've already held two workshops where I taught pupils the basics of the AGS editor and I showed them how to implement a small adventure game step-by-step. This approach was quite successful, e.g. some pupils decided to do a small AGS game as their graduation project at school.

Anyways, due to the success of the last workshop I was asked to hold another one as a part of a bigger event next week. This time the situation will be a bit different though, since this workshop has a new target audience: informatics teachers. The whole event aims to show school teachers alternative aspects of computer science, and in the best case some of them might be motivated to introduce new ideas in their curricula. However those teachers come from various school types from all over Austria and they teach pupils of ages between 10 and 20. Thus it is clear that I have to adapt my strategy for this new audience. Getting too technical or staying too superficial is likely to alienate a part of the participants, so I'll have to find a good middle road.

What is it exactly then, that I'll try to accomplish? I aim to show teachers how AGS can be used in their classes to complement the typical programming languages taught at school and to motivate interested pupils to dig deeper into it on their own. I have only about 2 hours time for that. My current strategy looks as follows:

1. I'll start by telling the teachers about the goals of my workshop. They should know what to expect.
2. Then I'll proceed with a brief introduction on adventure games. This will be very short, as these kinds of games are still very popular around here (the adventure game workshop is also the most popular one of the whole event). I'll also give a short general introduction about AGS and where to find more information about it. The participants will be shown some examples for successful AGS games (only screenshots) to point out their range and diversity.
3. Next the teachers will use the available notebooks for a few minutes to play the short demo game that was developed during the previous workshops. This will give everyone the opportunity to see first hand what we are talking about. 
4. After that I will give the teachers a short explanation how to install AGS at their schools and how to use the demo game template (which they will be able to download from our website after the workshop).
5. Then the main part of the workshop begins. Using the demo game template, I will spend about 45 minutes presenting some essential parts of the AGS editor, especially the room menu and the scripts. During this time I will also show how to do some very simple scripting and I will show how programming concepts like variables, decisions, loops, arrays etc. are used and manipulated in AGS.
6. Finally the teachers themselves will implement a small new puzzle to the demo game on their notebooks, using some scripting commands they learned in the previous step. First we will brainstorm together which steps are needed in detail and then they will try to actually script this puzzle on their own.
7. In the end there will be a short discussion and feedback.

Since there is a lot of information in step 5, the participants will receive handouts prior to the workshop. In particular these handouts will also contain an additional step-by-step tutorial how to start when developing a completely new game, because optimally teachers should be able to coach pupils who deem AGS interesting and want to go into more details themselves. Of course I will also provide links to the online tutorials.

Phew, what a huge post! So, what do you guys think? Am I on the right track? If you had 90 - 120 minutes to educate a bunch of teachers on how to use AGS in their classes, where would you put the focus? Of course there isn't much time now to change my strategy for the upcoming workshop, but comments and suggestions are always welcome and I will certainly consider them for future events.

[cat]

I would try to keep part 5 rather short. I'd give a short overview and then implement a puzzle. In part 6 they will have to do a similar puzzle. I think if you show them too much features at once, they might get confused (and 90-120 minutes isn't a lot of time).

Btw, in which university does this take place?

[Wesray]

Yeah, the plan is to show only the most important parts of the editor and a few scripting commands that the participants need for their own puzzle. It will still take some time to go through that, but mostly because I don't want to rush it and plan to show examples as I progress. And the event takes place in Klagenfurt.

Tomorrow is the big day then â€" hopefully the teachers will have as much fun as I had with the preparation! When the event is over, I’ll update this threat with how everything worked out.

[Snarky]

You haven't got a lot of feedback, probably because there isn't a lot to comment on. Your plan sounds good. I was a little worried that showing screenshots of "successful" AGS games would make it look "too good" (i.e. beyond the capabilities of most students), but playing the demo game made in the previous workshop should take care of that problem.

Good luck!

[Wesray]

Thanks for the encouragement, Snarky! You are right about the demo game - it's very short and quite amateur, but should be good for learning the basics.

The screenshot collage I see as a motivation for more ambitious students. It shows that AGS is much more than a toy, but can be used for professional gamemaking provided that you have the talent, motivation and time. Who knows, it might inspire some talented individual to make their own game one day.

[IndieBoy]

Could you film this? Or do a recorded version of your presentation at home? 'Cause I would really like to watch this presentation. If not, no problem, and good luck!

[Wesray]

Sooo... time to tell you about my experiences!

All of the workshops, including mine about AGS, were really successful and got a lot of positive feedback. Not only will we repeat the event in the near future, probably next January, but we were also invited to participate with our workshops at a similar event in another federal state.

Regarding the AGS workshop, there was a lot of interest in it, so I ended up doing it twice, in the morning and in the afternoon. The first group was good, but while the teachers were interested, some of them feared that there wouldn't be enough time to really use it in their classes. There was still a good discussion however and the overall reaction was positive. The reaction of the afternoon group was stellar though and we had lots of fun. Some of those teachers will definitely use AGS with their students and they promised to tell me about the outcome. When implementing their own puzzle, they insisted on doing the big one (I had also prepared a small puzzle, in case we would be short of time). In the end I had to almost throw them out of the room, since the final session of the event was about to begin. I had the chance to talk with some of those teachers privately, and the echo was very, very positive. Mission accomplished, I'd say!

@Indie boy: Sorry, I didn't film the WHOLE presentation, but we had some students filming parts of each workshop and getting interviews from participants. We plan to put a short movie about the event on Youtube, and some snippets of the AGS workshop will surely be part of it. Just be aware that the presentation was in German, and the video will be too.

[Fireball16]

Ags is some time useful but other times rubbish

[Ghost]

Congrats on doing this, Germany needs its AGS-awareness raised! I'm looking forward to that footage!

[bicilotti]

Ahhhh, I'm so dumb I didn't notice this! Congrats on your successful workshop!

I've tried a couple of game engimes and a couple of game programming languages, and I think AGS is really flexible, fun and allow to develop with remarkable speed.

It's nice to see that there are people like you who are spreading the word of Chris Jones.

Bravo!

[Wesray]

Thanks for the kind words!

The video for our newest event isn't finished yet. In the meantime here's a link to a video about last winter's Technik LIVE workshop: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnDXAvGl71Y

At 1:40 there's a clip from one of the AGS sessions that I did with pupils.

[bicilotti]

Klagenfurt! Man, we're neighbours! My hometown is Udine, which is pretty near the Austrian border.

Getting back on topic, very nice video, hope we're going to see the new one soon.

[Wesray]

Hello neighbor! I have been to Udine several times,  it's a beauitful city indeed.

[Wesray]

Igor Hardy's Developer Journal has just posted an article that I wrote about my AGS workshop experiences:
http://hardydev.com/2010/04/22/adventure-game-workshops-become-a-designer-in-1-day/.

[Dualnames]

Very nice read Wesray. I almost forgot you actually being the AGS workshop guy, so I was amazed and glad it was you!!