University of Florida offers class based on Starcraft

Anyone who has played a strategy game or worked with teammates in a shooter to capture an objective knows video games require serious brainpower. The theory behind the University of Florida’s EME-2040: 21st Century Skills in Starcraft course is that players learn valuable life skills including problem solving and resource management.

The class is even an honors course and prerequisites include “basic knowledge of and experience playing StarCraft.” Now there’s a phrase that did not appear on syllabi when I was in college. I am suddenly reminded of the old G4 TV commercial (you know, from back when they talked about videogames and stuff like that) where a prospective employee lists “12th Level Beast Lord” as one of the accomplishments on his resume. Replace the “Beast Lord” designation with “fended off numerous Zerg assaults” and the class will easily have been worth it. Provided, you know, that you can actually get a job with that line of reasoning. If anyone is taking this class and would like to share their experiences, by all means drop us a line.

EME-2040 is a three-credit course with 25 students and holds the distinction of being the first remotely taught course in the University of Florida history.
It has no final exam but will count toward student grade point averages.

Believe it or not, this isn’t even the first college course using StarCraft as a resource. A Berkeley undergrad taught a course on the fundamentals of competitive StarCraft in 2009.

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