Au revoir Co-hort 11

Posts on everything I remember promising to post – done. Papers marked. Marks up. A few extra emails done. Out of excuses for delaying this post.

You have been an extraordinary class. It was just so much fun…I really owe a lot to all of you. There are many reasons for how I feel, but a couple of them really stand out:

Said a version of this in the last class, but it bears repeating. The 2018 version of Law 423C was very special IMHO precisely because of the number of international students and the involvement and commitment those students brought. When I wrote my original text on Video Game Law in 2005, it was really written without borders because the number of Canadian video game cases could be counted on the fingers of one hand. So I’ve always seen the subject as internationally rooted, and games themselves as making the world a smaller place. This academic semester just felt so congruent with those perspectives, that it almost felt like a kind of homecoming.
There was always feedback and engagement from you – and lots of it. Whether through emails, posts, in-class, before or after class, there was always something to talk about. From the latest strange game-world event to whatever puzzled you most, it sometimes felt like we were dealing with as much outside of our scheduled times as within them. Have always felt that boundaries around education are artificial, and that the notion of scheduled classes within fixed semesters make little actual sense. Our interactions seems reinforcing of that.
Speaking of which, over the summer we plan to migrate this website to a more advanced platform developed by UBC CTLT. That platform creates greater potential for ongoing community building, so expect to hear more about those possibilities and feel free to participate if you want to.
Am still confused that we ended up with more students in our class after I (very clearly) explained that the way our law school’s rules work marks would be on average three marks lower unless registration went down by a fair number. Students who place learning above marks is every teachers dream, so count me as impressed…
A huge thank you to those of you who used and provided feedback on the “Self-Socratic” tool that UBC CTLT and I created. Your support gives us the conviction that there is real potential here. We have lots to do over the next few months to implement versions 1.5 & 2.0. Hopefully some of you will want to test those versions and provide additional feedback.

So that’s it for me…for now. Thank you so much for everything you brought to Video Game Law. It was a lot. Please stay in touch.

Jon