{"id":2875,"date":"2012-09-29T10:29:41","date_gmt":"2012-09-29T16:29:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/?p=2875"},"modified":"2014-09-12T11:58:23","modified_gmt":"2014-09-12T17:58:23","slug":"theories-of-games-and-interaction-for-design-4-on-game-studies-scholarly-authority-and-interdisciplinarity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/2012\/09\/29\/theories-of-games-and-interaction-for-design-4-on-game-studies-scholarly-authority-and-interdisciplinarity\/","title":{"rendered":"Theories of Games and Interaction for Design (4: On Game Studies, Scholarly Authority, and Interdisciplinarity )"},"content":{"rendered":"<span class=\"span-reading-time rt-reading-time\" style=\"display: block;\"><span class=\"rt-label rt-prefix\">Approximate Reading Time: <\/span> <span class=\"rt-time\"> 3<\/span> <span class=\"rt-label rt-postfix\">minutes<\/span><\/span><p>These are public postings of my writings for the first course of the Graduate Certificate Program in <a title=\"http:\/\/www.reg.msu.edu\/AcademicPrograms\/ProgramDetail.asp?Program=1497\" href=\"http:\/\/www.reg.msu.edu\/AcademicPrograms\/ProgramDetail.asp?Program=1497\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"new\">Serious Game Design and Research<\/a> at <a title=\"http:\/\/www.msu.edu\/\" href=\"http:\/\/www.msu.edu\/\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"new\">Michigan State University<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><em>Please note: these posts are <strong>not<\/strong> intended as any kind of commentary on or assessment of the course I\u2019m 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.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Feel free to comment, disagree, or what have you.<\/p>\n<h1>Week 4<\/h1>\n<p>These are the readings for the week:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Van Eck, R. (2008). Building Artificially Intelligent Learning Games Intelligent Information Technologies: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (pp. 793-825): IGI Global.<\/li>\n<li>Hattie, J., &amp; Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. <em>Review of Educational Research, 77<\/em>, 81-112.<\/li>\n<li>Bogost, I. (2008). <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mitpressjournals.org\/toc\/dmal\/-\/3\">The rhetoric of video games. <\/a>In K. Salen (Eds.), <em>The ecology of games: Connecting youth, games, and learning (pp. 117-140<\/em>). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These are the Games:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>iCivics, <em>Do I Have a Right <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/icivics.org\" target=\"_blank\">icivics.org<\/a><\/li>\n<li><em>Q<\/em><em>uest Atlantis <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.questatlantis.org\/\">www.questatlantis.org<\/a><\/li>\n<li><em>Gamestar Mechanic <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/gamestarmechanic.com\" target=\"_blank\">gamestarmechanic.com<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>While reading (slogging?) through Rick Van Eck\u2019s 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 <a href=\"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/Thesis07\">my dissertation<\/a> at about the same time that Van Eck\u2019s 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 Gagn\u00e9, 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, \u201cSays who?!\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p>Isaac Newton is claimed to have said, \u201cIf I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of Giants\u201d. Clearly, there is a long and venerable tradition of paying homage to prior work, but is this changing?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201c(S)cholarly authority was conferred upon those works that were well published by a respected publisher. It also could be inferred by a scholar&#8217;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&#8217;s work by other authors, thinkers, and writers \u2014 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.\u201d (<a title=\"Jensen, 2007 #2745\" href=\"#_ENREF_3\">Jensen, 2007<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Today, scholarly authority can be built through Google and user popularity (\u201clikes\u201d). 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?<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019ve 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?<\/p>\n<h4>References and Further Resources:<\/h4>\n<p>Bullock, R. (2005 &#8211; 2012). The Norton Field Guide to Writing\u00a0\u00a0 Retrieved from http:\/\/www.wwnorton.com\/college\/english\/write\/fieldguide\/<\/p>\n<p>Jensen, M. (2007). The New Metrics of Scholarly Authority. <em>The Chronicle Review, 53<\/em>(41), B6.<\/p>\n<p>Blog Post on Questioning Academic Authority: Learning 101, Liam McIvor Martin, August, 2009 http:\/\/virtualteachingassistant.com\/blog\/mind-shift\/questioning-academic-authority\/<\/p>\n<div class='wp_likes' id='wp_likes_post-2875'><a class='like' href=\"javascript:wp_likes.like(2875);\" title='' ><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-likes\/images\/like.png\" alt='' border='0'\/><\/a><span class='text'>Be the first to like.<\/span><\/p>\n<div class='like' ><a href=\"javascript:wp_likes.like(2875);\">Like<\/a><\/div>\n<div class='unlike' ><a href=\"javascript:wp_likes.unlike(2875);\">Unlike<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"span-reading-time rt-reading-time\" style=\"display: block;\"><span class=\"rt-label rt-prefix\">Approximate Reading Time: <\/span> <span class=\"rt-time\"> 3<\/span> <span class=\"rt-label rt-postfix\">minutes<\/span><\/span>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 &hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/2012\/09\/29\/theories-of-games-and-interaction-for-design-4-on-game-studies-scholarly-authority-and-interdisciplinarity\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9,12,14,24],"tags":[127,193,76,178],"class_list":["post-2875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-educational-technology","category-games","category-general","category-teaching-learning","tag-game-design","tag-gcsgdr","tag-serious-games","tag-tc831"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Hsb6-Kn","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2814,"url":"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/2012\/09\/21\/theories-of-games-and-interaction-for-design-3-3-queries\/","url_meta":{"origin":2875,"position":0},"title":"Theories of Games and Interaction for Design (3: 3 Queries)","author":"Katrin Becker","date":"September 21, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"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. Each week, we are also required to post three questions for the rest of the class. These are mine. Please note: these posts are\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Educational Technology&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Educational Technology","link":"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/category\/educational-technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2971,"url":"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/2012\/10\/09\/theories-of-games-and-interaction-for-design-5-important-results\/","url_meta":{"origin":2875,"position":1},"title":"Theories of Games and Interaction for Design (5: Important Results)","author":"Katrin Becker","date":"October 9, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"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\u2019m taking, or its instructor, OR\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Educational Technology&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Educational Technology","link":"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/category\/educational-technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2767,"url":"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/2012\/09\/13\/theories-of-games-and-interaction-for-design-2-education-vs-learning\/","url_meta":{"origin":2875,"position":2},"title":"Theories of Games and Interaction for Design (2: Education vs Learning)","author":"Katrin Becker","date":"September 13, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"This is a re-posting of my reflection 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\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Educational Technology&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Educational Technology","link":"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/category\/educational-technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/sg-taxonomy-1024x535.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/sg-taxonomy-1024x535.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/sg-taxonomy-1024x535.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2968,"url":"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/2012\/10\/09\/theories-of-games-and-interaction-for-design-5-3-queries\/","url_meta":{"origin":2875,"position":3},"title":"Theories of Games and Interaction for Design (5: 3 Queries)","author":"Katrin Becker","date":"October 9, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"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. Each week, we are also required to post three questions for the rest of the class. These are mine. Please note: these posts are\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Educational Technology&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Educational Technology","link":"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/category\/educational-technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3191,"url":"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/2012\/11\/29\/theories-of-games-and-interaction-for-design-11-3-queries\/","url_meta":{"origin":2875,"position":4},"title":"Theories of Games and Interaction for Design (11: 3 Queries)","author":"Katrin Becker","date":"November 29, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"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. Each week, we are also required to post three questions for the rest of the class. These are mine. Please note: these posts are\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Educational Technology&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Educational Technology","link":"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/category\/educational-technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2995,"url":"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/2012\/10\/14\/theories-of-games-and-interaction-for-design-6-3-queries\/","url_meta":{"origin":2875,"position":5},"title":"Theories of Games and Interaction for Design (6: 3 Queries)","author":"Katrin Becker","date":"October 14, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"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. Each week, we are also required to post three questions for the rest of the class. These are mine. Please note: these posts are\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Educational Technology&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Educational Technology","link":"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/category\/educational-technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2875"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3105,"href":"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2875\/revisions\/3105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}