Lecture: Tuesdays 9:30-10:45 am
Discussion Sections:
Tues 11:00-12:15 pm [class # 51882]
Tues 11:00-12:15 pm [class # 51885]
Thurs 11:00-12:15 pm [class # 51883]
Thurs 11:00-12:15 pm [class # 51884]

In this (3 credit) course, we will discuss current research on the kinds of thinking and learning that goes into videogames. We’ll investigate the benefits and drawbacks of this digital gameplay, covering everything from perception and attention in first person shooters to the development of historical understanding in games like the Civilization series, from socialization in massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft to literacy practice and ethical decision making in roleplaying games like Fable and Morrowind, from new developments in games for learning (its not just Oregon Trail anymore) to the use of game design as a way to teach fundamental design and technology principles. Throughout the semester, you will gain familiarity with current research on course topics, develop a language for reflection on the cognitive and educational merits and drawbacks of growing up on games, and gain new insights into the ways in which the your digital playspaces and pastimes shape how you (and your peers) think and learn.

Please see attached flyer for more information. If you have any questions or would like a copy of the syllabus, please email me.

Caro Williams & I just put the finishing touches on a second worked example from the WoW research we’ve been doing here at UW-Madison. This one is entitled “Math as Narrative in WoW Forum Discussions” and builds on a previous analysis we did that focused on scientific reasoning in WoW forums in which we gathered a large representative sample of World of Warcraft discussion forum posts (1984 randomly-selected posts over 85 discussion threads) and found that 4% of the posts provided models of complex in-game phenomena that were explicitly mathematical in nature with 1% including relevant mathematical computation as a form of proof. In this study, we wanted to take a closer look at the kind of math that was going on. And what we found knocked our pants off.

This worked example details the close analysis of a single post from within this larger corpus taken from a discussion thread titled “Get Educated: The MYTH Behind Shadow Scaling” (retrieved November 3, 2006). The overall subject of the thread concerns shadow priests and the rate at which their abilities scale as they advance through the game. Throughout the discussion thread, participants exhibit a wide range of mathematical skill from “basic interpretation of the gist of the mathematical model presented” to “criticism of certain attributes or computational steps in its justification” to “wholesale criticism of the model’s terms” to “counterarguments and rebuttals that are entirely non-mathematical”. We selected this specific post, however, because of its remarkable use of narrative structure as a way to organize its mathematical argument.

Using discourse analysis methods of Gee (1996, 1999), the narrative structure framework provided by Labov (1972), and some basic mathematics (algebra, arithmetic), we show how, within 31 lines of text, the author manages to present a mathematical model for the claim that “shadow has crap scaling,” including computational evidence that his model (and therefore claim) is correct – not in the format of a standard mathematical proof but rather in the form of a story.

For the past year or so, I’ve had a secret pet project I’ve been working on in my ample (ahem) spare time: tracing the development of early digital media literacy practices and skills in my son Walt.

This past few months I’ve gotten pretty lazy about it, to be sure, but its been fun watching his digital literacy skills emerge in the same way — and sometimes tightly coupled with — is traditional print literacy skills…

Oddly, we know a lot about early childhood development of the latter (reading & writing stuff like books) but there isn’t a whole lot on the former. My general questions are things like:

• When does he grasp that the person in the moving image on screen isn’t really there? For a while, he would periodically peek behind the computer or television screen to see if they might be back there, behind the “empty box” of the screen itself.
• How does he come to understand things like the relationship between his input on the controls and the Wii avatar? Oh yes, Walt actively plays the Wii and has since he was able to walk. He very quickly understood that jumping on the Wii Balance Board would make the little person on the Wii ski slope jump. But does he know that funny blonde face in glasses (my Mii) who’s watching from the sidelines in the animation represents is his mom?
• How the hell did he figure out how to select movies using the iPhone Touch?! He was barely 18 months and figured this out on his own in the backseat of his car one day.

Yes, our kid is surrounded by media. We are two media and learning scholars, so our house is filled with screens and computers and controllers and devices and cords. By the time Walt could walk, we had him playing RockBand. Since his first birthday, he’s owned some form of iPod (now the iTouch).

Do I worry about his ’screen time’? No, actually I don’t. He walks away from a Pixar movie and picks up a book or toy as often as he walks away from the book or toy and asks for the “hippo show.” In my own opinion, media is as life enhancing (to borrow words from Jim Gee & Dewey before him) as any good book or what have you.

When I first joined Jim Gee’s research team and switched to studying games back in 2001, there was no real body of research on videogames and their effect on child development. So, I went back to the literature on television to see what the general findings were there. Of all the studies on the effects of media on children, the biggest conclusion I drew across them all was pretty simple and compelling: The conversation on the couch around the television was more important for learning than what was on the television itself. In fact, just like the old tutoring studies that found that even mediocre tutoring improved learning, it turned out that even mediocre conversation about what was on the show had impact.

So, again, do I worry about his love of movies and videogames and devices? Nope. But then, as a tech geek myself, I use those moments as an opportunity to engage in joint media participation with my favorite guy on the planet (next to Kurt, of course, but then he’s always right there too, geeking out with the rest of us).

Cool huh? I’m very much looking forward to working on this with them. Will keep you posted…

Identifying Protoform Practices: Leadership
by Constance Steinkuehler, Elizabeth King, Sarah Chu, Esra Alagoz, Aysegul Bakar Corez, David Simkins, Yoonsin Oh, Bei Zhang

We tried to use the worked example format to do a close analysis of a transition moment in our after school online gaming lab for guys when one of our participants (ColdCuts) emerges as a leader in the group. We took advantage of the structure and function of worked examples to show how we approach data analysis at the ground level (blow by blow) and then what conclusions (sometimes tentative) we draw from such an analysis. The main goal here is not just the presentation of content, although hopefully we have something to say that’s useful for folks about how informal leadership emerges in precarious ways in such playspaces.  A second and equally important goal, though, many even the main goal, is to make transparent the ways we think about data and the tacit/overt theories of cognition and learning that we bring to such analyses.

On my research team, we do joint joint data sessions – what Jordan and Henderson (1995) call “Interaction Analysis” – as a regular part of our research team work in order to calibrate, so to speak, the ways we see the world. I have a strong belief that doctoral work is not about coursework but rather about apprenticing into a particular set of research practices and dispositions. For me, this is one of the primary forms of doing that kind of mentoring work.

As for me, I still need to do my own slides. Pfft.

Official Abstract: Cognition and Learning in Online Games for Adolescents
Despite dismissals as “torpid” and inviting “inert reception” in popular books and press outside of peer review, videogames (especially online games) have emerged as an important research topic in educational research; however, we have seen very little impact on the in-school performance of those who play. The goal of this project is to explore this contradiction by assessing the educational merit of games designed for and played by youth instead of adults (as typically studied) and by examining how games are situated in young people’s everyday lives. I propose to conduct a cognitive ethnography of the game Runescape, the most popular online game with children (ages 10-16) that would include longitudinal study of 8-12 gaming youth from local schools in order to assess the impact of gameplay on their day-to-day lives, social relationships, and school work. Data analysis would focus on assessing what youth learn through online gameplay, how that learning aligns or conflicts with educational standards, and how such games fit into the fabric of their everyday experience. Results from this work would help us better understand the impact of online games on the social and cognitive development of young players.