I taught the inaugural semester of Music 325: Scoring for Games at San Francisco's Academy of Art University in 2013.
Offered in the School of Music Production and Sound Design for Visual Media, this was an upper-division composition class for music majors exploring the unique considerations of scoring for games. I helped develop the curriculum for this new course and I created all of the class materials.
In addition to lectures covering the history and context of music in games, I led deep dives into the music of contemporary games such as Journey and Dead Space 3 (which, since I implemented a fair amount of the music, allowed me to show real in-engine work). And I brought in guest lecturers, including BAFTA-nominated game composer Robb Mills and LucasArts veteran Jesse Harlin.
Also, I prepared a very involved final project for the second-half of the class: I coded a simple music engine in JavaScript that the students used to implement an adaptive score directly into a game level using Unity.
Since these were already upper-division music majors I figured they had plenty of music theory; what they needed was some insignt into how game music actually works. In retrospect this was probably a little ambitious (and my music system was kind of buggy...), but the students that did it well did it really well.
I would have loved to continue developing this course, but in 2014 I went back to EA full-time, and, with a couple young kids at home, I didn't think the commitment made sense.
I have also guest-lectured a number of times.
At my alma mater, UC Berkeley, I presented to the advanced digital animation course CNM190 in 2015 and 2017. I gave a short lecture about sound for picture, and then screened the in-progress student works and gave feedback, suggestions, and support.
The old stompin' grounds, 2017.
I was invited back to do it the second time by the teaching assistant who had actually been an undergrad in the class the first time I did it, and had found it really helpful.
At the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, I was invited to be a "surprise" guest at a session of a Sound Design course in the Technology and Applied Composition Department. The class had done a project re-designing sound in Dead Space 2, and the professor thought it would be fun to have the game's Audio Director on hand for the student presentations. It was probably mildly terrifying for the class, but I had a great time. A lot of the students' work was legitimately good!
I presented to the Senior Seminar in the Broadcasting, Telecommunications and Mass Media school at Temple University, in both the Spring and Fall semesters of 2011. Kind of a "career day" vibe, but I prepared materials and took questions from very engaged classes about working professionally in audio.
In 2005, I co-hosted an "Expert's Day" session at Ex'pression College, presenting a very deep dive into the adaptive music implementation in Demon Stone. In addition, I very briefly sat on the curriculum committee for the college, advising about game sound. My inclination was to teach more theory, the why rather than just the how of game audio, but that didn't really align with the school's goals. Fair enough, but it wasn't a great fit, and I quickly bowed out, grateful for the opportunity.