Education
Here you'll find information regarding the educational institutions I have attended
From my college days and beyond, as well as some extra details and reflection.
Listed in chronological order from the date I began.
There's a lot for me to talk about here, so if you prefer to give your eyes a rest, feel free to sit back, relax, and hit the play button next to any section to have me read it for you!
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Highlights
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Bachelor's Degree in Game Design & Production Management.
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6 years total of games development-related education
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Passion and drive to pursue further skill development outside of what was mandatory
Wiltshire College Chippenham
(September 2014 – June 2016)
BTEC Advanced Diploma in Games Development
Achieved “DDD” (3x Distinction)
Audio:
Ahhh, Chippenham College, the institution that helped me find my drive. Here I began studying Games Development after a friend suggested it, before that I wasn't even aware it was a course! Studying for two years, the Games Development course at Chippenham gave me an excellent foundation to further my studies, teaching me all the basics from programming, to concept art, to 3D modelling and so on. But not only that, they helped me find the drive to continue in education, as prior to Chippenham College I was not what you'd call the biggest fan of academia, mainly through poor experiences in the past. However, I approached my time at Chippenham College with renewed vigor and enthusiasm, determined to give it my all. I set myself the target in my first year of not achieving anything less than an average of Merit for every module, but in hindsight, I should have set my sights higher, as I achieved this with relative ease. In my second year, I resolved to get a Distinction in every module, again, a goal I achieved. This led me to qualify with a "DDD", triple Distinction, a result I was most pleased with, but that's not all I did in my time at Chippenham.
Opening the new campus back in 2015, quite the honour I'll never forget.
And on the right, being interviewed by the BBC for the very same occasion.
Through their student liaison officer at the time, I found my way into a considerable number of positions and experiences throughout my time here. In my first year, I began to get involved through Student Ambassador work initially and also joining the student magazine team as a writer, but swiftly took on the role of editor, and I guess overall "lead".
This helped get people's attention, and votes I hope! Not my finest photoshop work, but it got the message across I think.
Then, later in my first year, when the seat of Vice President of the Student Union opened up midway through the year, I was asked if I'd be interested in taking on the role, although usually, the President and Vice President roles are only open to students that have been there for a full year already, I was glad to accept. It snowballed from there really, and I'm somewhat conscious of going into too much detail so to summarise, at the end of my second year I had a lot to add to my list of achievements. On the Student Union side of things, I'd added President as well as Equality & Diversity officer to my repertoire. I was also asked to sit on the Local Youth Network board for Wiltshire Council, and through that also invited to become a trustee for CBLC (Chippenham Borough Lands Charity). I was asked by the college to cut the ribbon for the new Chippenham campus, which was a completely new £21m campus that had been in the works for a few years, needless to say, I was quite flattered and gladly accepted (Here's the article for anyone interested: https://www.gazetteandherald.co.uk/news/13973369.new-21m-wiltshire-college-campus-in-chippenham-opens/ ). I was also Student Rep for my course, both years, and took part in the peer support initiative.
During the last half-year of my time here I was also working as a Duty Manager at my local cinema, although I was originally applying for just kiosk staff, but thanks to my work at college I was offered an alternative position instead. To this day I'm still not entirely sure how I managed to do as much as I did here, as well as work 30-50 hours per week, all I remember is I loved it!
Abertay University - Dundee Scotland
BA in Games Design and Production Management
September 2016 – June 2020
(Results still to come!)
Audio:
During my time at Chippenham College, when we began looking at the next step in our education, I originally didn't want to study at university, but when looking into jobs I realized I would certainly need a BA degree to even begin applying for most jobs, so to university it was! I heard that Abertay was the best university in all of Europe for studying game development, and so that's where I decided to go. It was also a good 450 miles from home, and therefore something of a big move/adventure too, that only served to draw me there even more.
It was here that I found myself able to dive deeper more into the role I loved, after going over the basics again for the first couple of years, since many on the course hadn't specifically studied game development before.
Champlain College - Burlington, VT, USA
January 2019 – May 2019
Modules:
Games Production | Level Design | Interactive Design Production
Audio:
Last section here, my time in Burlington, VA, studying at Champlain College. Saving the best for last in a way, as this was probably my favourite time during my education. I met some fantastic people and got a huge boost to my self-esteem whilst here too. Though that may be in part down to the reception someone with my accent receives in America vs the reception in Scotland... hmm. Well, that certainly wasn't the only reason! My favourite module whilst at Champlain was undoubtedly the Games Production module, as you could probably guess since this was a module in which we all got to practice our chosen roles.
In the latter half of second-year, we had our first proper group project where we'd go through all stages, from concept to development. I was very excited about this module too, as I was being given my first proper team to work with! Further details on this project can be found elsewhere on this site, so I won't go into detail here, but it provided an exciting end to second-year and a wonderful warm-up for our big third-year projects! The third-year project was set to span the entirety of that year, but unfortunately, I also wanted to study abroad during my time here, and Abertay had an excellent study abroad program, an opportunity I couldn't pass up, so I did everything I could for my third year team during the first semester to prepare them for the rest of the project! Thankfully one of the designers stepped up to take over producer duties, and another team member took the team leadership responsibilities. And so the latter half of my third year was spent abroad in America, at Champlain College, though details on that will be in the section below!
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However, my fourth year at Abertay wasn't quite what I expected. Due to some issues outside of university, I struggled to keep up, though keep up I did until I found out that at the end of third year we could qualify with a BA degree. This was information I hadn't been aware of until then, and if anything was something I was a little frustrated to hear. I went to university for three reasons. To gain experience through group projects, to establish contacts, and to get a degree that would allow me to apply for the positions I wished to pursue. Having found I'd actually already gotten everything I wanted from my university education, much to my surprise, I decided my time would be better spent calling it quits on fourth year and turning my attention to resolving the aforementioned "issues" as well as beginning work on my CV/Portfolio, in order to prepare for the then-upcoming GDC conference in March, which I was planning to attend. Many things were lined up for that trip, mainly networking related of course, however if you're reading this far in the future, just to clarify this was 2020, the year of Coronavirus, and so GDC did not quite go to plan. But either way, here ends my university education and so I set my sights on beginning my career instead!
This proved a nice refresher, and a chance to hone my skills further, alongside the modules that I hadn't gotten to study in such detail before. In our first year, our QA module was one I enjoyed in particular, working with a team of fourth years to help test their game which had won some award, giving them funding to take their project further. I'd heard that QA is often a stepping stone for many aspiring producers as entry-level positions can be hard to come by these days, as well as a part of game development that I greatly enjoy already, having gotten involved in many early access titles previously for these exact reasons, so I was excited to prove myself in this module. I'll remain proud of finding the most bugs throughout this module and achieving an A, even if the development team were a little fed up with all of us as they suddenly found a lot of their time was now dedicated to fixing issues rather than implementing new features. It was a learning experience for them too I think...
The main campus of Abertay University in Dundee, though the sun isn't always out quite like this.
I was certainly pleased to be filling the role of Producer over not one, not two, but three projects in the course of a semester, each a longer project than the last and each with its own completely different brief. Further details on these projects are to be found here on my website, so again, I won't go into too much detail, but through this module, I got to experience challenges I'd not faced before, learn new management skills first hand, and meet some fantastic people. My games production class even gave me a card at the end of the semester, wishing me well for the future and expressing their belief in my abilities, and that may not sound like a big thing but it was without a doubt the best moment of my entire education. We all doubt ourselves at times but their positive reinforcement gave me a much-needed boost.
Aside from that module, I also studied Level Design as well as Interactive Design Production.
Level Design was another fantastic module that I mainly chose to expand a skill set I had some interest in that wasn't directly related to project management. It also allowed me to hone my team-based skills through a variety of class tasks/activities despite having a far more individual-based assessment criterion. My lecturer for that, John Boyd, was a font of helpful advice and reassurance, another person I'm very glad I met.
The Interactive Design Management module was something of a curveball at first, being an incredibly mixed class with students from many different majors, all coming together to create an interactive experience, a term which sounds broad, and that's because it was. Creative freedom was something of a central pillar of this class, as it wasn't solely a games development class. Our final project involved three robots, each interacting with one another in something of an eternal domino effect. I didn't expect it to be, but this was another of my favourite modules of all time. Once again I got to practice my project management skills as we were in teams for this assessment. But this time, the team didn't consist of solely game dev students and as such wasn't the team environment I was used to. There were also twelve of us, which is one of the larger team sizes I've worked with. An exciting challenge and twist on my usual team management experiences that I thoroughly enjoyed.
My experience at Champlain reaffirmed my love for working with people, and taught me some incredibly valuable skills along the way, so a big thank you to everyone at Champlain!
The stunning Champlain College in Burlington, VT.
I sincerely hope I find my way back to Burlington one day!