September 9th was the first meeting of the RTFM class. We introduced the students to the topic and purpose of the project. From our summer game design experiences, we believe that a very narrowed topic is a good idea, because it will give the students a good base on which to work off of. Elyse and I assigned the first exercise based on our background research in May -- students were to critique 3 assigned and one other educational game. They answered the following questions on our class forums:

Does the gameplay overshadow the educational content? Which mechanics do you feel are the worst culprits?
Is this a good game? Why or why not?
Is this a good example of a successful educational game? Why or why not?
What would you do to improve this game?

The purpose of this exercise was to get the class thinking about educational game design and the specific issues in creating a serious game.