These are public postings of my writings for the first course of the Graduate Certificate Program in Serious Game Design and Research at Michigan State University.
Please note: these posts are not intended as any kind of commentary on or assessment of the course I’m taking, or its instructor, OR of Michigan State University or the College of Communication Arts and Sciences, or the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media. They are solely my thoughts and reactions that stem from the readings.
Feel free to comment, disagree, or what have you.
Week 4
These are the readings for the week:
- Van Eck, R. (2008). Building Artificially Intelligent Learning Games Intelligent Information Technologies: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (pp. 793-825): IGI Global.
- Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77, 81-112.
- Bogost, I. (2008). The rhetoric of video games. In K. Salen (Eds.), The ecology of games: Connecting youth, games, and learning (pp. 117-140). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
These are the Games:
- iCivics, Do I Have a Right icivics.org
- Quest Atlantis www.questatlantis.org
- Gamestar Mechanic gamestarmechanic.com
While reading (slogging?) through Rick Van Eck’s chapter this week, a number of things struck me. First, it is long, but it is also written in clear, plain language, making it quite easy to read and understand. The claims and arguments are thoroughly supported by foundational research in several fields, and that makes it a valuable resource for those of us who are still finding our way through the literature. Want to know how games tie in to established educational understandings? Van Eck pays homage to those upon whose knowledge he builds in true scholarly fashion. Kudos to Dr. Van Eck for recognizing those foundations and for drawing clear paths from their work to his. I was doing similar work on my dissertation at about the same time that Van Eck’s chapter was published, so this is an area with which I am familiar and I found much to agree with. I also used the prior work of people like Gagné, Jonassen, Merrill, Lave, Vygotsky, and others. When I was doing my work, my supervisor impressed upon me the importance of supporting my claims with solid, primary sources. Any time I made a claim of any sort, she would immediately respond with, “Says who?!” Her insistence on my doing this helped me to lay out very clearly the new work that was mine and also to identify just how my new work added to the existing body of knowledge.
Isaac Newton is claimed to have said, “If I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of Giants”. Clearly, there is a long and venerable tradition of paying homage to prior work, but is this changing?
“(S)cholarly authority was conferred upon those works that were well published by a respected publisher. It also could be inferred by a scholar’s institutional affiliation (Yale or Harvard Universities vs. Acme State University). My father got his Ph.D. from Yale and had that implicit authority the rest of his professional life. Authority was also conferred by the hurdles jumped by the scholar, as seen in degrees and tenure status. And scholarly authority could accrue over time, by the number of references made to a scholar’s work by other authors, thinkers, and writers — as well as by the other authors, thinkers, and writers that a scholar referenced. Fundamentally, scholarly authority was about exclusivity in a world of scarce resources.” (Jensen, 2007)
Today, scholarly authority can be built through Google and user popularity (“likes”). The relative merits of Web 3.0 models aside, how does this apply to a new discipline that is still establishing its scholars? Is it still important to discuss the ancestry of ideas, or is it acceptable to cite only recent work, or work primarily in your field?
One of the challenges I faced when I did my own writing was that work outside of my discipline was not seen to be as valuable as work published inside, even if it was more relevant or timely. Game studies in general, and the educational games in particular are fields of study that come from a number of distinct disciplines, and with that come different styles of scholarship.
Some scholars, like Jim Gee seem do not cite foundational work in their writings, yet their work is still viewed as weighty and seminal to the field. Indeed, Gee rarely cites any works more than 10 years old, unless they are from his original field, namely, linguistics. I’ve always found it odd that so much of his work has to do with education, learning theories, and instructional design, yet so little of that body of work is referenced. Does it matter? Should it?
References and Further Resources:
Bullock, R. (2005 – 2012). The Norton Field Guide to Writing Retrieved from http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/write/fieldguide/
Jensen, M. (2007). The New Metrics of Scholarly Authority. The Chronicle Review, 53(41), B6.
Blog Post on Questioning Academic Authority: Learning 101, Liam McIvor Martin, August, 2009 http://virtualteachingassistant.com/blog/mind-shift/questioning-academic-authority/
“work is still viewed as weighty and seminal to the field. Indeed, Gee rarely cites any works more than 10 years old, unless they are from his original field, namely, linguistics. I’ve always found it odd that so much of his work has to do with education, learning theories, and instructional design, yet so little of that body of work is referenced. Does it matter? Should it?”
Thomas Malone’s dissertation, Patricia Greenfield’s Mind and Media and the Harvard conference on games is from 1980-82 I think. The Loftus Loftus book is also from that time period so lots on learning, play and entertainment 30+ years back. If you really want to look at Serious Games and the foundations of interactive game learning I’d look at two old pieces of software: Pilot and Super Pilot. None of this begins or began with a theory. See Minsky from MIT and Masters of Doom for why theory isn’t as important as technique.
I have looked at work done in games. I’ve also looked at work done in simulation, psychology, and several other fields. In the area of educational games, BOTH theory and practice are important.
It is worth noting that there are about as many crappy educational games made by game designers as there are crappy games made by educators. While it is true that in order to talk about games with any authority one must actually play games (and Gee certainly has that credential), if you’re going to talk about educational games you need to know the educational landscape as well – practice AND theory.
There is very little on education in Gee’s writings, although there is some on learning (but not enough). If you’re going to talk about education and games – you need to be able to place your work in the education landscape as well as others. When I first read Gee’s first book on games and learning it struck me how many of his principles were almost identical to those of scholars in education and instructional design – none of which he cited. For me, his work would have more credibility if he demonstrated that he knew about this prior work and could either explain how his differed, or acknowledge that all he was doing was applying other people’s principles to games.