COLLABORATIVE PROJECT - 2026/7

Module Overview

The games focused contemporary digital media that students study as part of the first and second years on the degree offers a diverse and applied array of forms, formats, approaches, technology, production techniques and delivery methods to ideate, plan and develop games design projects that engage participants and players in a variety of creative and commercial contexts.

The Collaborative Project module is a milestone on the degree programme, offering the opportunity to apply the technical skills and creative practices you have developed on the course so far to design, develop and produce a more independently formulated piece of work in a freely chosen format/medium as part of a team. Students will produce a collaborative project with other students on the module in an area of the students’ choice, allowing then to develop in detail individual specialisations within the broader field of games design that they can take forward into the future careers.

The brief for this group project is flexible and relatively open, a selection of simple starting points to elicit a creative and collaborative response which is defined not only by its content but also by the digital format and technology you will chose for its implementation and deployment. This combination of creative idea development plus applied practice of appropriate forms of expression and realisation and teamwork will form a solid basis for future artistic and professional practice in designing for video games, the creative industries and beyond.

Each student group will be assigned a supervisor who will assist them in choosing their subject matter and creative and critical approaches, and who will provide advice, encouragement and formative feedback over the course of the research, design, implementation, testing, demonstration and writing-up process, as well as suggesting relevant reading material which may help inspire or critically locate the project. An agreed length/scope/word count equivalent should be negotiated with the student’s supervisor dependent on the form of creative project proposed.

 

The end of semester group submission will be accompanied by an individual critical reflective report produced by each student, which allows you to reflect individually on the project’s relationship to previous work in the field, form or genre, on the collaborative and design processes and thinking behind the creative choices made, and to locate and reflect on their individual contributions to the realised project.

 

As well as the final submission itself you will undertake at least one formative work-in-progress presentation during the module semester 1, and work on developing self-reflective skills through completing a progress log with you supervisor.

 

The module draws together and integrates the various areas, specialisms and skills students encounter and explore as part of the programme, including further opportunity to explore and develop new and extended coding and programming skills and expertise appropriate to the project.

As such, the module connects to other modules on the undertaken by the students across their degree, allowing them to bring together and build from strands from earlier games related modules that they have particularly liked and excelled at, or act as a complement to other modules that the student has enjoyed but where they wish to use this project module as an opportunity to explore and develop their experience in a particular aspect of games design. Therefore, this module can connect with any of the modules students have studied across their degree, and allows them to tailor their pathway through the degree, and the degree itself, in their own way.

Module provider

Literature & Languages

Module Leader

MOONEY Stephen (Lit & Langs)

Number of Credits: 15

ECTS Credits: 7.5

Framework: FHEQ Level 5

Module cap (Maximum number of students): N/A

Module Availability

Semester 2

Prerequisites / Co-requisites

None

Module content

In order to give students training in the research skills needed to plan and complete a collaborative group project (including a critical reflective report), this module includes a range of seminars and tutorials which are compulsory for all students:

 

Indicative seminar and tutorial content might include:

 

• idea generation strategies


• collaboration


• writing a collaborative project proposal


• Benefits of disciplined product development


• project planning


• requirements analysis


• research methods


• Project management methodologies and tools


• drafting, editing and testing


• workshopping of work in progress


• proofing and finalising the project submission


• troubleshooting


• Documentation of individual specialised contributions to a game design project


• writing an individual critical reflective report


• Play-testing and planning a testing strategy

Assessment pattern

Alternative Assessment

N/A

Assessment Strategy

The assessment strategy designed to provide students with the opportunity to demonstrate:

 

• their ability to generate ideas, concepts and proposals in response to an open and flexible brief, to identify a games design creative project area with fellow students and to realise this as a collaborative output of a professional and industry facing standard


• planning and design ability in carrying forward a group project, complete with implementation, testing, editing and demonstration stages of the process employed


• the development in their critical writing skills in reflecting cogently on the project and their specific role(s) and contributions to it


• their understanding of the context of their work in relation to other creative and/or critical work and ideas


• their judicious choice of appropriate media format and production strategy


• their development of practical research, project management and writing skills, highly prized by modern employers


• their creative ability in identifying themes, techniques and practices that realise their creative vision as a games designer

Thus, the summative assessment for this module consists of:

 

• Developed Creative Games Design Team Project and Individual 1000 Word Critical Reflective Report plus completed Supervisor Log (100%)

 

The summative assessment is an opportunity for students to develop their design interests and work into a polished collaborative group project in a form/mode/genre of their choosing. The individual critical reflective report element of the assessment offers an opportunity for students to contextualise their role(s) and contribution to the project and to determine and develop the critical context of their creative work to better understand where they may fit in a contemporary games landscape (e.g. game industries, literary markets, readerships, or specific publication streams).

 

 

Formative Assessment & Feedback:

 

Verbal feedback and formative ‘feed forward’ is provided through specific group supervisor advice and feedback, as well as in the seminars, tutorials and group meetings from tutors and peers. Feedback is also provided on project proposals, as well as work-in-progress which is monitored both in person and via online tools and direct feedback is provided along the way. Students are expected to support each other’s work wherever possible – both practically and through feedback and ideas. Specific feedback is provided at milestone points designated for each individual project between tutors and students. These can include proposals, storyboards, animatics, pre-viz, prototypes, rough cut, initial fine cut, testing or other key progress points as appropriate to the form and format of each work.

As such, planning, design, implementation, testing, editing and demonstration skills as well as writing, presentation and critical analysis skills will be developed and honed which will feed forward to the summative assessment submission at the end of the module.

There is the option of a range of other feedback mechanisms agreed between supervisor, tutor and students in week 1 of the module, such as seminar contribution and dissertation related writing exercises.

Module aims

• allow students to bring together the different and interconnected strands of games design explored across the degree in developing a portfolio of work collaboratively with other students
• provide students with the opportunity to identify, research, design, implement and test a practical demonstration of a core theory or concept and to realise this in a collaborative forum
• advance collaborative creative research efficacy and effective project proposal generation in the team environment with other students
• help students develop the necessary practice methodology skills and self-reflective thinking, to hone their time management skills, technical and writing habits, more effective personal design, editing and revision skills
• develop in students the ability to develop independent and collective project management skills alongside practical and scholarly research
• allow students to reflect on and engage with the specific challenges of creating and designing an interdisciplinary project together with other students
• build confidence in making creative decisions in a well-informed and productive way, and build the ability to explain and justify them lucidly
• encourage students to collate and present their work in an industry facing format and to submit work for publication

Learning outcomes

Methods of Teaching / Learning

The learning and teaching strategy is designed to:

 

• help students produce innovative, imaginative and exciting publication standard games design creative outputs through applied collaborative design with fellow students guided by their supervisor and though sharing work for feedback from both their supervisor and tutors and from peers in the seminars, tutorials and group meetings, thus helping them engage in exploring and effectively realising their creative ideas as a practical and inventive games design project


• facilitate students’ productive reflection on both the creative project and the collaborative nature of this and on their own role within the team processes and outcomes by developing their ability to reflect clearly and in an informed manner on their creative and design goals and how they have attempted to achieve them, in planning, designing, realising, editing, reworking and testing their group games design project


• equip students with the project management, design and research skills they will need to produce their contribution to group project as well as an informed individual critical reflective report by developing their experience in drawing on their own creative and critical thinking and by developing collaborative and independent research skills


• assist students in formulating ideas and working collaboratively as a team in bringing these ideas to final realisation of the project by providing seminars, tutorials and group meetings throughout the semester aimed at addressing common and specific issues that arise in collaborative games design projects


• bolster student resilience and resourcefulness in what can, overall, be an isolating learning experience through group work and assessment alongside regular specific project-group supervision sessions with their supervisor and through the organised meetings where both tutors and fellow games design final project students will share encouragement, knowledge and experiences in the safe spaces of the seminar, tutorial and group meeting setting.

 

The learning and teaching methods include a combination of specific group supervision sessions with an allocated academic supervisor, seminars, tutorials and group meetings, captured content, guided learning and independent learning and includes opportunities in the schedule of interactive meetings for students to present their own work to the wider class and respond to that of other groups on the module in a supportive, constructive and open manner.

 

Designed to help students reflect on and apply their learning to practical design, collaboration and project management skills, the seminars, tutorials and group meetings act as safe spaces for developing and exchanging ideas, support, design practices and processes, critical thinking and writing skills.

 

Students are encouraged, in presenting their projects and work-in-progress to consider varied materials such as, for example, video and visual materials, sound objects, lexical texts, etc with a view to increasing student accessibility.

Indicated Lecture Hours (which may also include seminars, tutorials, workshops and other contact time) are approximate and may include in-class tests where one or more of these are an assessment on the module. In-class tests are scheduled/organised separately to taught content and will be published on to student personal timetables, where they apply to taken modules, as soon as they are finalised by central administration. This will usually be after the initial publication of the teaching timetable for the relevant semester.

Reading list

https://readinglists.surrey.ac.uk
Upon accessing the reading list, please search for the module using the module code: ELI2056

Other information

The School of Arts, Humanties & Creative Industries is committed to developing graduates with strengths in Employability, Digital Capabilities, Global and Cultural Capabilities, Sustainability, and Resourcefulness and Resilience. This module is designed to allow students to develop knowledge, skills, and capabilities in the following areas:

Employability: This module requires students to deploy, and so strengthen, a variety of skills, all of which have transferable applications in real-world professional settings. The module builds on and develops a range of proficiencies appropriate to games, live action film, animation, and other associated areas of the media industries, by providing up-to-the-minute knowledge and understanding of tools and techniques used everyday in these fields at professional level. On this module, students work together collaboratively to produce a group project, so teamworking and collaboration skill are highlighted. Supervision is provided to the project groups but students for the most part work independently as part of team on projects that they themselves have conceived rather than having a defined project curriculum. They must therefore demonstrate independence and self-discipline in areas like time-management, research, writing-up, editing and proof-reading, so as to produce final assignments researched, written and formatted to a standard appropriate to a professional setting. At the research stage this will also usually involve extensive use of a range of digital archives, catalogues and resources, thus enhancing students’ digital capabilities.

Digital Capabilities: this module, and the programme as a whole, is built on the very latest techniques and technologies developed and employed by the games and related industries, thus ‘digital capabilities’ very much comes with the territory. Video game design is an inherently ‘digital’ affair of course, and students are expected to identify and utilise appropriate digital resources within the confines of the project proposed. Specific digital and technical skills utilised and developed in this module will vary depending on the approach taken by the group, but are likely to include project management tools, troubleshooting tools and practices, coding solutions, digital environments, animation and more. Students will be encouraged to consider the opportunities and challenges posed by generative AI in a collaborative project of this type. Appropriate use of digital media and communication platforms is increasingly important for visual arts and creative industry professionals and students will gain and develop those invaluable skills as part of this module. As part of the module seminars, you will also be encouraged to communicate with one another and to work collaborative on some exercises using SurreyLearn, Microsoft Teams, and other digital and file and output sharing platforms, skills will be carried forward to other final year modules on your degree and beyond.

Resourcefulness and Resilience: students will learn to take constructive criticism from their supervisors and peers and adjust their projects in the light of that formative feedback. The Collaborative Project requires a high level of independent, guided and project-group learning which will allow students to practice their resourcefulness and resilience as games designers, specialists in the creative industries, researchers, critics and/or creative writers. As such, this module provides students with a number of challenges which reflect the current state of the games and related industries. Students need to respond to these with inventiveness and flexibility and are often required to research their own solutions to given problems as well as work collaboratively with other students to generate solutions and outcomes.

Global and Cultural Capabilities: Although the focus of each group of students’ Collaborative Project is unique, every completed project represents a sustained, sophisticated and nuanced development of some aspect of games design that relates to games culture and/or culture more broadly conceived. An exercise of this kind also always involves a significant degree of self-reflection and increased understanding of the student’s own subject position and inherited cultural assumptions, especially when collaborating closely with fellow students. The Collaborative Project thus inherently enhances cultural literacy and the student’s capacity to think critically and sensitively about their own and other cultures.

Sustainability: Throughout their degree, students are made aware of sustainable production practices behind the computer, ‘on set’ and as part of games design processes and practices. Students are shown best practices such as LED-based lighting, virtual production technologies to minimise crew and talent travel, recycling of sets and other materials, better transport choices, minimising of waste, and awareness of environmental and social effects on local communities and landscapes. Students are expected to incorporate this knowledge and expertise into their collective projects. Furthermore, from a content viewpoint, many of the creative projects developed by students on the programme will, of necessity in the current climate, address environment and sustainability issues as part of their subject matter. Teachers across the School also work closely with the University of Surrey’s Institute for Sustainability to explore and promote the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.

 

Please note that the information detailed within this record is accurate at the time of publishing and may be subject to change. This record contains information for the most up to date version of the programme / module for the 2026/7 academic year.