Otago Polytechnic Welcomes CODE Announcement

Otago Polytechnic welcomes the announcement today that the New Zealand Centre of Digital Excellence (CODE) has become an incorporated company, CODE Limited.

"Otago Polytechnic has a close and ongoing partnership with CODE," says Dr Megan Gibbons, Chief Executive Otago Polytechnic.

"We are excited to have a Jason Tibble, a member of our Executive Leadership Team, on the Board of Directors for the new CODE entity," Dr Gibbon says.

"Our video game-related academic pathways are supported by CODE, which has played a part in helping us develop and expand these offerings.

"We have established a dedicated multidisciplinary work-based learning team, building on existing collaboration between our Design and IT programmes," Dr Gibbons says.

"We currently have nearly 50 learners enrolled in the Games Development pathway in either the Bachelor of Design or Bachelor of IT. This is more than double our anticipated learner numbers and we expect at least another seven learners will be enrolled in the recently introduced NZ Certificate in Digital Media and Design for semester 2."

Otago Polytechnic recently signed an MOU with Futuregames, which will provide professional development for staff, mentoring for student projects, review and feedback on Otago Polytechnic’s games courses, as well as a range of learning materials.

CODE Chair Murray Strong, who is also Te Pūkenga Council Chair, is also excited by the developments.

"We’re backing people to succeed not only in creating their own viable, world-class games here in Dunedin, but also providing a platform for skills development which benefits the whole ecosystem.

"A number of our former and current grant recipients are now in talks with publishers and we expect to see some of the first Dunedin product being released by the end of the year."

Read more about Otago Polytechnic’s games-related pathways here

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