Today marks my final workday at the University of Skövde. I have worked here for almost five years, and I believe that a summarization is in order.

Introduction

On the first of January 2020, mere months before the Covid-19 pandemic hit Sweden, my work at the University of Skövde began after a year and a half at Blekinge Institute of Technology, where I worked after my studies. Looking back and reflecting over these years, I realize just how formative they have been. Here, I make an attempt at summarizing the experience I have had over these years.

Introduction
Courses
View on Research
View on Pedagogy
Union Commitment
Safety Representative
Personal Life
Finishing Words

Courses

Over the years, I have had the good fortune to work with multiple courses at the university. This work has ranged from taking over courses that have been running smoothly for years to creating completely new courses.

Game Physics

One of my first tasks at the University of Skövde was to take over and run the course Game Physics. This course was offered to the third-year game programming students and focused on understanding why physics is hard to get right in games – especially if one takes into account the need for performance as well. The course was initially developed by Henrik Engström, who was also the examiner for the course, and was only to be given two more times before being phased out from the program. As the course was to be given in the autumn, I had almost half a year to make myself familiar with the content and update it where necessary.This was at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, and I realized that, come autumn, we risked seeing an upswing in infections again. As I needed to read up on and understand the material anyway, I decided to completely change how the material was to be presented to the students. Instead of holding traditional two-hour lectures, I divided the material into 16 categories, all but one containing between two and eight short lectures. Each lecture was a video recording, about five minutes long, presenting and explaining a concept relevant for the understanding of game physics. All in all, I recorded just shy of 85 video lectures for this course. As a complement to these video lectures, there were weekly seminars for which the students could submit questions or ask for clarifications on concepts they had encountered in the material. Runnable simulations, with code, were also provided for the course. These I worked with translating from the original C++ implementation in a framework created by Prof. Engström to Unity, as this was the environment the students were used to.For assignments, I kept the original course assignments as they were – five short group projects and one bigger individual work. The shorter group projects were divided into real-world and simulation assignments. These were to be presented as a video for the real-world assignments or as an executable for the simulation ones. These were shown during a seminar, and the students were encouraged to discuss each other’s solutions. Common errors were compiled and presented as extra material for the student group. The individual work ran alongside these group works. Here, the students chose a physics phenomenon to simulate and write a report about. To support the students in the report writing, a necessity due to the lack of training through the programme, a writing guide was compiled and given to the students.

Game Projects

During my first year at Skövde, one of my colleagues left for a job within QA at Paradox Interactive. Being relatively free with a lot of hours to find work for, I was thrown into the world of Game Project courses as course responsible together with another colleague. While Skövde has had game project courses since the programs started, this was an entirely new iteration of courses. More importantly, there were now three of them. As I worked with my colleague to understand this course, I also realized that the following two courses were not even in development yet. As such, I proposed to change that and took a holistic approach to creating the courses Game Project 2 and Game Project 3. At the same time, my colleague and I changed a lot of the core in Game Project 1 based on our own and students’ reflections.This work was very rewarding, but also very draining. It started with gathering information, allowing me as an outsider to finally get a glimpse of not only the history of game development that exists in Skövde, but also interviewing and listening in to staff at the department and former students. I conducted interviews, tried to understand how my colleagues saw these courses – whether they had worked in them or not was irrelevant. I listened to the professionals from the industry around us, and read through research regarding game project courses around the world, transdisciplinary courses around the world, as well as game development reports and books. With all this in mind, I started compiling rough drafts for the two courses, using two colleagues for discussions, and presented them to the programme co-ordinators. After taking their responses and compiling them, tweaking the courses, I presented them to the department before they were adopted.I knew that these courses would not be entirely what students, or colleagues, expected. My aim was to give students the tools to succeed in the industry, to differentiate themselves from the students that had passed a higher vocational education programme. What I got was a… reputation. I hope to one day be able to sit down and present each of the Game Project courses in exhaustive detail; focusing on the development of the courses, the challenges they faced, and how the students reacted. However, that day is not today.

Theses

During my time at the University of Skövde, I supervised and examined quite a few theses. Over the years, I have met many different kinds of students and works. I have learned a lot from both supervising and examining these works – and even if I might have a higher standard than expected at times, I believe that most students have enjoyed the time as well. There’s something special about seeing the student’s academic prowess bloom like you do as a supervisor and examiner, how you must follow their thought process on the paper, and can guide them towards clarity and brevity with their texts. At times, I have been harsh with my comments or feedback – but at the end of the day, all I want is for my students to finish their studies having learned what they need to learn.For a list of all theses I supervised and examined during my time at the University of Skövde, see this page.

View on Research

One thing that really changed during my time at the University of Skövde was how I view research. When I arrived at the university, I came from an engineering background with a high emphasis on measurable – quantitative – data for research. I cannot even say that I looked down on qualitative research – that would be to give myself way too much credit. No, the truth is that I almost completely dismissed research that was not of the sound, measurable, statistically provable kind. After a stern talk with – more a lecture given by – professor Henrik Engström, I slowly opened up my mind to the idea of something more. Sidenote: On the topic of Prof. Henrik Engström, I warmly recommend his book Game Development Research, which can be found here

That was a rabbit hole, as this not only opened my eyes to qualitative research, but also to the idea of inter- and transdisciplinary research. This new perspective made me spend hours searching for research for the game project courses, but also helped me as I looked into research that could be suitable for other courses in the Game Programming programme that I was a teacher in. It has given me countless new perspectives and helped me develop myself both professionally and personally. Most importantly for my time at Skövde, and for my journey ahead, it has given me new perspectives on games, game testing, and game development at large.

View on Pedagogy

During my time at the University of Skövde, I was required – as part of my contract – to complete 15 credits worth of pedagogy courses. These courses have shaped my pedagogy in many ways, and also opened up new keywords to use when searching for research for my courses. Most importantly, however, it gave me time to reflect on my ideas and ideals, my pedagogy, and what I believe is important for learning.Interestingly enough, the end result is mainly not a shift in my pedagogical beliefs, but rather an understanding regarding how I can support students more effectively in their learning. For me, the most important part is that the students are here by their own free will, wishing to learn. This, for me, means two things. Firstly, my work is therefore to give the students the best education I can offer. Secondly, and most importantly, it means that the students have to take responsibility for their studies and not expect to be spoon-fed everything. With this in mind, my aim is always to have courses with clear goals, a thought-out progress, being open-minded and listening to the students, and challenging them in ways aimed to deepen their knowledge – not only during assessments, but also through the material and communication.Of course, there is a lot more to it than this. As part of a later course I took at Skövde, I started writing down my Pedagogical Philosophy. In the future, I plan to revisit this document and upload it here. For now, this short text will suffice.

Union Commitment

During my time at Skövde, I also had some commitment to SULF, The Swedish Association of University Teachers and Researchers. I was a union representative for the local union for two years. However, this is not something I wish to highlight too much; in truth, I did little more than join meetings and help arrange minor activities for our members.

Safety Representative

A role I was more involved in, however, was as a safety representative. Most of it I’m not allowed to talk about due to the duty of confidentiality that is part of the role. What I can say is that I played an active role in developing new ways for HR and safety representatives to cooperate for a better work environment.

Personal Life

I would be remiss if I didn’t cover some of the important parts that happened to me personally during my time at Skövde. So here it comes, in chronological order:

My significant other and I took the trip we always dreamed about to Osaka, Japan
I turned 30, which I have heard is some kind of milestone
I got married to the love of my life
My son, Andrej, was born

Finishing Words

My time at Skövde has been wonderful, and there are many – students, colleagues, and peers from the local game development scene – that I’ll miss meeting on a regular basis. Many of them I’ll meet and talk with as part of the PhD project; others I’ll certainly run into during my stays in Skövde.But now, forward to new adventures. Allons-y!

My Last day at Skövde