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Perhaps a distinction should be made here between *types* of "labs." There are lab courses exactly as Dude described, scripted to provide a different perspective on core concepts. But there are also design courses (I am thinking engineering, here) that are not so scripted, where students face real-world constraints with the support of instructional staff. And then there are research labs - the undergrads who seek opportunities to work in them get to experience the real mccoy.

I kind of enjoyed the one I had like this.

The scripted labs that Dude is talking about is what I found less than interesting.

Managers have a responsibility to shareholders to maximize the profits of their companies. If they can do that by demanding highly-trained employees, they will. Companies do invest in worker training, but one risk they face in doing so is that their trained workers will go somewhere else.

You folks might enjoy Gary Becker's seminal article on the acquisition of general vs firm-specific capital. He delineates the cases in which it is rational for the firm vs student to incur training costs, and in what proportion, be they general or firm-specific.

Broadly speaking, it could be rational for firms in some industries to have students finance a portion of firm-specific training if contracts are in place and enforceable, with the firm paying efficiency (above-market) wages. We see this a lot in science and business fields with tuition fees being reimbursed upon hire. In these cases, admission to prestigious programs or training pertinent to the firms acts as a signal of quality and actually increases the likelihood of "good" candidates being hired into the work of their choice.

My opinion is that employment litigation and unionization have driven a wedge between the risk appetites of employers and employees and upset the apple cart.

But back to Becker's paper! One of the major inputs into the decision process of investing in human capital is the relative cost to the student--in financial costs and effort-- the latter of which is low for our gifties.

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.23...0&uid=4&uid=83&uid=63&sid=21101788582171

Of course-- BUT... in looking at Dude's post:


That's untrue. Well, the labs are scripted... and they ARE intended to reinforce particular concepts. However, the real world STILL doesn't care about the script, and most undergraduate students don't go through a whole program without learning that the hard way at some point. THAT is what makes the lab experience (as opposed to simulations or demonstrations) valuable. Because it allows the student to make mistakes/errors-- and to problem solve as a result-- or to rely on the safety net of the instructor to help them do so. It's a very controlled framework, though, because of the scripted nature of the laboratory exercises, which is important in those first baby steps to open-ended problem solving.

Simple materials and less-than-anally-retentive procedural detail always produce interesting results in a teaching lab. Always. Because invariably, there are a few students who don't do what was intended. Now, at that point, it is incumbent on the instructor to DO something with that... which is why I think that many people who have been through those scripted labs at an engineering-type institution, or one that doesn't place highly skilled teachers into those labs may have not learned much in the process, since, well... in those situations, the answer is usually just a shrug and dump, or for the instructor to quietly tell the student "here, use Jim's data." It becomes a missed learning opportunity.

But that's not the fault of the structure of those classes. It's a failure in the educator in charge of them-- it's lazy.

That's when those introductory laboratory classes become nothing more than "training" (which is what Dude was referring to, in my opinion-- since that kind of environment is little more than a mindless "follow the directions. Bleat after step 2," kind of 'learning' environment). Note that I drew a distinction between learning and training.

And even when it's not a procedural lab, but a troubleshooting lab, you know ahead of time that whatever problem you're going to encounter is one the teacher has already provided you the tools to resolve. For example, if it's a software issue, you know a significant clue to the nature of the problem is going to show up in a message somewhere, and it's somewhere you've been taught to look. In the real world, you may find yourself supporting software that was poorly engineered, where many error messages, if they're cut at all, are not meaningful.

The problems are also limited in scope. If I'm learning server administration, I know that whatever problem is occurring in the lab, it's related to server configuration. In the real world, I'm more likely to spend time troubleshooting issues that are caused by bad programming, user error, network changes, security issues, hardware failures, or integration problems with another system. In other words, most of the problems I spend time on are not server configuration problems.

Naturally, I've seen many, many problems occur in troubleshooting labs apart from the ones the teacher had set up. The normal reaction is, as you said, to steer the students away from the problem, because it interferes with class time and the purpose of the lab. Anyway, the student usually doesn't have the skills, access, and/or big-picture process and design knowledge to resolve the unexpected problem.

I do concede that amylou had a good point about research labs. They're turning students loose on real world problems, which is totally awesome. But this conversation was about a child who wanted to create games, and there aren't research labs at universities doing that. I think a lot of university presidents would balk at the idea of student teams writing games using university resources. There's no federal grant program tied to it, and securing grants seems to be the point of most research universities, at least from an administration perspective.

Thread is drifting... engaging mini-thrusters

Quite a few universities now have Game Programming Clubs and competitions, which is pretty neat.

For a semi-technical college path, an Interaction Design degree may be a great path into the industry.

While I think there is potentially much value in a college education, it may well not be the best preparation for a game designer.

If I had a kid who was interested in game design, I'd try to arrange for some mentoring by game design professionals before making a decision one way or the other about college. It could well be that college does not make sense given the culture of that business. And college would still be an option later on. (But perhaps this has already been discussed - I didn't read through all the pages of this thread.)

Hmmm-- yeah, honestly, the coursework that I've seen up close tends to allow for independent projects on a pretty regular basis. Now, it may require instructor approval, but that is an opportunity to practice real-world problem solving and theory (which depends on the course). This would include both engineering and computer science coursework, obviously, but less obviously, it's also common in the sciences and in math.



Also just noting that my explanation of lab activities is predicated on a perspective from the physical sciences. Dude's is in computer science. My objection to 'virtual' lab exercises is founded in precisely Dude's argument: that these activities don't really ALLOW for serendipitous learning beyond the scope of the planned exercise... and the reason is that interaction with a machine basically is perfectly reproducible aside from human error. The framework/scaffold is too tight. That just doesn't exist in a chemistry or microbiology lab setting-- there are always things that go wrong. I've taught literally thousands of lab sessions, and I can count on one hand the number that never resulted in something unexpected. It's of value to students to watch the problem-solving of an expert in action on a real-world problem like that, for one thing. "Hmmm... wonder what happened here... do you mind if I try something? Huh. Let me check this other thing, then...oooooo... I think that this reagent wasn't completely dry before you started. Let me explain why I think that."

I really don't like "foolproof" lab activities, because I consider them sort of pointless. They might as well be demonstrations.

Argh.

I wish someone would explain schools' fascination with iPads to me. In this context,they strike me as being (expensive) shiny toys, and I honestly do not understand what they add to the learning process.