When I found Westwood College Online , I was at the end of my proverbial rope. Jobless and disillusioned with the local college scene, I started to seek vocational training in IT. I knew I would never be truly happy with my job but at least it would pay the bills, and being under such a tight money crunch at the time, I was willing to give up anything just to relieve the pressure.
I started searching for an IT certification program. And while doing so, I just stumbled across Westwood Online's game development programs.
I admit I was skeptical at first. After seeing a few ads for game design degrees online and finding many to be just a few programming classes with a course on the history of electronic media course thrown in for good measure, I wasn't counting on finding anything worthwhile at Westwood. But I signed up to receive information, and within the next two days, an admissions representative contacted me with a phone interview. That same afternoon, I was enrolled in Westwood's Game Art and Design program.
The Program
The Game Art and Design program is a three-year accelerated degree. 70 percent of it consists of curriculum that teaches basic and advanced topics in 2D and 3D art, animation, level design, and game design. Some courses I have taken are Sequential Art and Visual Narrative, 3D Modeling and Animation, Game Design Process, and Game Analysis and Playability.
25 percent of the Westwood course load is made up of general education courses that you would find at any university such as College Writing, Geometry, and Psychology. The other 5 percent is business and administration courses such as Introduction to Business and Project Management.
Because Westwood's programs are accelerated, each term consists of nine weeks with a break of about one week between them. Much like at traditional colleges, the first week of class is used to go over the syllabus and get oriented with the subject matter; the midway point (week 5 or 6) is used for midterms; and the last week is reserved for finals.
For most of the courses at Westwood Online, midterms and finals are not exams, but rather projects, generally called key graded assignments (KGA). For example, the curriculum class I am taking this term, Game Design Process, has three KGAs. The first one, which is due in week two, is to research and write a paper about the pros and cons of various game engines. The second one, due in week six, is to write a level design document for a concept my classmates and I have fleshed out in the previous weeks during regular assignments. And the third KGA, due in week nine, is to use all the skills learned in the class to block out a level in Unreal Editor.
A Typical Week
The Westwood school week generally starts on Monday and runs through Sunday. Week one always consists of an introduction, a discussion, and sometimes an assignment or quiz. Because of the online nature of the program, student participation is done through threaded discussions. For the introduction forum, students are prompted to post a few paragraphs about themselves and perhaps answer a question related to the course. For example, in my Game Design Process class, the question was whether we have had previous experience using Unreal Editor.
For the discussions, students respond to a more in-depth question regarding the week's material. We have until midnight Wednesday to respond to the question, but we also have to respond to two of our peers' postings (helping to facilitate intelligent and relevant discussion), which we have until midnight on Sunday to do. Instructor participation varies from class to class, but many instructors will respond to well-written posts to keep the dialogue flowing.
