I gave interviews to students wanting to join the York Game Lab (my seminar class) today. I had 24 entrants, and ended up taking 13. The interview process was unique and fair in my opinion. Outlined below:
Morning – game design
In the morning, I organized the entrants into groups of four and tasked them with creating an educational game. They had one hour to develop a prototype and conduct a test play session. Each group was assigned current seminar students who observed the interactions among the entrants throughout the hour.
Afternoon – individual interviews
During the afternoon session, each entrant underwent an individual interview conducted by a group of four students. This means one entrant was interviewed in front of four seminar students. The interview consisted of four questions, and all current seminar students assessed the entrants using a rubric (Likert scale 1-5). The average score for each entrant, based on the assessments, served as their ‘result’ for the interview. I observed all interviews from a central location and participated by asking additional questions when necessary.
Choosing entrants
Ultimately, I convened with all of my current students to discuss and determine who should be accepted based on their performance in both the group work and interview sessions. This proved to be the most challenging part of the day, taking over an hour to decide, as everyone held similar yet slightly different opinions about what makes a candidate ‘good.’ Nevertheless, I am genuinely pleased that we conducted both group and individual sessions. This approach provided us with a comprehensive view of the entrants from various perspectives and gave us insight into what they might be like as seminar students in the coming year.
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