Department of Computer Science, Clemson University
CpSc 481/681 - Handheld Games
Brian Malloy
Course Contract and Rubric
January 21, 2009

This is a creative inquiry course where we will explore topics relating to computer games, educational computer games and the hand held game platform: DS. As part of the course, we will build a web page that, hopefully, will chronicle our progress in these three areas.

To accomodate the diversity of interests and talents in the course, we will employ a grading system referred to as contract grading. The contract will be agreed upon by both the instructor and the student or student team. The deadline for submission of the initial contract is Wednesday, January 28th. At that time, I will set a meeting time when I will meet with each individual student; at the meeting I will give feedback about the contract and assign a grade to the project that you propose.

I will also set a meeting date/time around the middle of the semester when we will meet to evaluate your progress in the course and with the goals of your contract. At that time we can make some adjustments to the contract.

The goals, projects and milestones for the contract will be established by the student or student team together with the instructor. However, each contract must include the following items:

• A fairly detailed specification of your goals in the course, what you will contribute and how you intend to make this contribution available to the other members of the community.
• A fairly detailed specification of the project that you will submit at the end of the course.
• Five milestones that are fairly specific. We will agree, as a group, on due dates for these milestones.
• At least two presentations, with some details of what you will present and how you will present. These presentations will likely take place as part of the milestone submissions. For example, will you be presenting the initial stages of your game, will the presentation include some powerpoint slides, ...