One of the most prestigious universities in the country is offering a course in playing video games as part of a shocking $40,000-a-year curriculum.
The University of California (UC), Berkeley will launch a course in ‘The Art of Fighting Games’ – which aims to make students better at video games for its Spring 2024 curriculum.
The class will focus on the Japanese video game, ‘Street Fighter III 3rd Strike,’ with homework assignments consisting of students actually recording themselves playing the game, according to the class syllabus.
University of California Berkeley is offering a course in ‘The Art of Fighting Games’
Prerequisites are not required and students will not be graded based on their performance.
UC Berkeley labels the class as an ‘introduction to fighting games, geared towards people with less than 100 hours in the genre,’ but the university does not explain how the class could help students enter and succeed in life after college.
Enrollment continues through January 24 and the university has encouraged students to sign up by stating: ‘The only thing you do need is a willingness to learn and fail!’
The university continues to explain that students will be graded on their ‘eagerness, commitment to improvement, and effort in the course assignments.’
Classes are split into two 90-minute segments, starting with a lecture and ending with a lab that discusses Japanese stereotypes in character design, the origins of Japanese and American interactions, and the ‘social economics behind design decisions, and work culture in the Japanese media industry,’ according to the syllabus.
The college appears to validate the course by saying it is ‘designed to serve as a gateway to understanding modern Japanese culture and will offer students a way to interact with Japanese history and even the Japanese language.’
Students will be required to play the video game against each other in a ‘Swiss-style’ tournament
‘The Art of Fighting Games’ syllabus says it will focus on Japanese video game and arcade culture
UC Berkeley claims students ‘will be more proficient in the fundamentals of a fighting game’
For exams, students will fight each other in a ‘Swiss-style tournament’ of the Street Fighter game and are required to save the replay, give a presentation about the player’s background, and analyze the fighting style they used during the competition.
‘By the end of this course, you will be more proficient in the fundamentals of a fighting game and be more knowledgeable about the genre overall,’ reads the course site.
The site continued to explain that this is ‘on top of having a more informed understanding of how modern-day Japan’s media culture came to be.’
Some colleges are now adding classes that focus on topics like Taylor Swift, that could remove the prestige of having a college degree.
The new UC Berkeley class comes as reports show that college students aren’t learning the same way they did before the Covid-19 pandemic.
But the answer may be for teachers to focus on learning the material rather than focusing on the typical grading methods.
‘When classes are structured as learning laboratories … and students aren’t penalized for exploring new methods, making mistakes, asking questions, or admitting failure, they become more creative and self-directed,’ Gerald E. Knesek, a senior lecturer in the School of Management at the University of Michigan–Flint, wrote in a 2022 Harvard Business Op-ed.
‘They seem to open up and thrive when asked to write one-page reflections and implication papers about what the concepts or materials mean to them,’ he said.
Knesek went on to explain that he applied this grading style in his own classes and found that ‘… students appear to be having fun while they are working on class exercises and engaging in active discussions related to the topic presented.’
Knesek said he believes this kind of teaching will restore students’ love of learning, and said: ‘It is time for the entire educational system to start re-examining our current grading paradigm.’
