SWaGUR stands for “the Saskatchewan-Waterloo Games User Research” program and is funding by the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Create grant. Interdisciplinary in nature, SWaGUR is a unique graduate program that recognizes the Canadian economy’s growing demand for skilled game researchers. It aims to bring together researchers from various academic backgrounds to form game development teams.
Through the program, students develop research and professional skills that will assist them in the gaming industry. It also offers courses, such as the one Mark Hancock was hosting, as part of their professional development within a game user research context.
During the gur-course, students learned about the gaming industry within a global and Canadian context. The gur-course also aimed to teach students how to:
- Read and critique research on player experience, game motivation, gamification, and game design,
- Overview various evaluations methods for creating research questions, practice creating controlled experiments to measure game quality,
- Evaluate player experience through techniques that do not involved the user; and
- Practice skills related to survey design and deployment, interview and focus group facilitation, and player observation.
Interested in applying or want to read more about the SWaGUR program? Read more here