Instructor Guide

Instructions and recomendations for effective curriculum implementation.

Preparation

  • Become familiar with the curriculum, including the Course Overview and the session plans provided in the Teacher Resources.

    Download Unity and create a Unity account at unity.com.

    Install and become familiar with the Unity using Unity Learn.

    Become famliar with the game templates (Bouncy Box, Platformer, Dungeon Crawler, First Person Shooter, racer, and TBD). Students will have a lesson using each of these templates and then will select one of the templates to build a game from.

    Bring and distribute USB drives in order for students to save a backup of their projects and to take the projects home. To save their work, they will just need to copy the entire Unity project folder.

Setting Up

  • On all student workstations,

    Download and install Unity.

    Add a desktop shortcut to Unity.

    Add a desktop shortcut to the course website.

Session Plans

  • The course is comprised of 10 sessions. Session Plans are provided in the Teacher Resources to provide instructors with a step-by-step guide for facilitating the session. Each Session Plan includes presentation slides to be projected throughout the session.

    Each section of a Session Plan represents a lesson. Lessons labeled Teacher-Led require the instructor to provide direct instruction, facilitate class discussion, and lead class activities. Self-Paced lessons are designed for students to complete at their own pace. However, until students begin the custom lessons on day 5, students should not begin new lessons until the entire class is instructed to do so. A concluding activity for each self-paced lesson is provided which students should work on until the rest of the class is ready to move on to the next lesson.

Teaching Assistants

  • Training for teaching assistants is encouraged. This provides the lead teacher the opportunity to get to know the TAs and define expectations for them.

    Assigning TAs to specific roles (such as artist, animator, audio specialist, and programmer) is recommended. In this way, you play to the strengths of your TAs and the students know who to seek help from for specific questions.

    If TAs are plentiful, giving a TA the role of “Instructional Designer” may be useful. This person can create additional custom tutorials based on student requests.

    Suggested TA expectations include:
    1. Be attentive to lessons and announcements intended for the entire class. Assisting students while the teacher is addressing the class causes students (and TAs) to miss important information.
    2. Actively and regularly survey student progress when there are no students seeking assistance.
    3. Consider assigning a teacher-led lesson to TAs who are capable and comfortable with this task. Doing so will provide a possibly refreshing change for students, help the students get to know and become comfortable with the TAs, and help the TA develop professionally (possibly eventually becoming a lead teacher themselves).

Problem Solving



    Scripting Problems:

    A common issue that may occur is that a student's script may not work correctly.

    The most likely problem is that the student has spelled something wrong, used lower-case or upper-case incorrectly, or made a sytnax (for example, leaving off or adding extraneous semicolons, parentheses, curly braces or quotes).

    The console may provide some information as to which line has the spelling error but if not, a student may need to read carefully through the code they have written to make sure everything is spelled correctly.


    Game Works but Acts Strangely:

    Sometimes there are no errors in scripts or the game but when played, it doesn't work as planned. Platforms fall or move in the wrong direction, UI elements do not update as intended, resources are not be collected upon collision, etc.

    This can happen when properties are not set correctly in the Inspector, values in code are incorrect, components are missing or disabled, and for many other reasons.

    Unfortunately, there is no easy fix for problems like this and the best thing to do is go back through the lesson to make sure everything was done correctly.


    RPG Game:

    Guide for specifics of each game template, if needed.


    Other Issues:

    When it comes to game development, unexpected problems will arise and solutions will no always be known.

    The best way to handle problems is to prevent them in the first place by following good practices.

    Students should save often. This can be done using CTRL + S or by clicking File -> Save in the top-left of Unity.

    Students should also follow steps within lessons carefully.

    If there are any problems with Unity, try these steps to fix common issues.