New Blog on Virtual Worlds & Learning: Pop.Cosmo

File this under: Blatant Self-Promotion.

We started a new blog based on the research our team (aka Pop.Cosmo) is doing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as part of the Games, Learning & Society Initiative . We study cognition & learning in the context of massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) or virtual worlds. Constance Steinkuehler (that's me) is Principal Investigator. With the help of a generous grant from the MacArthur Foundation, we empirically investigate key literacy practices that constitute successful MMO gameplay (such as scientific literacy, computational literacy, and reciprocal apprenticeship) & how those literacy practices connect up with life and learning beyond the virtual worlds themselves. Then, based on this understanding, we develop after school instructional programs that leverage MMOs to get kids involved in what we see as core 21st century skills (that are often under-emphasized in classrooms).

This is our research website and blog: http://popcosmo.org/

Comments

[Neils Clark]

1.

Congrats and good luck, Constance!

Have you looked much at Charlie Nesson's pet poker project?

It's interesting to watch learning take center stage. Are you guys taking the platform that MMO games will probably leverage learning the most effectively? Or for some skills, some of the time, would poker, a single player FPS, or something altogether different work best?

Don't take this the wrong way, because I mean it constructively: I have the fear that we've confounded a couple of technologies here: game design and VW platforms. They buffet one another, but are each a unique kind of beast. You can watch game design take off at grognards, and progress up to the explosion that took place when digital worlds made imagination palpable. Computer platforms then made the exploration of the form a bit easier, and we've seen radically new types of games. While VWs grew alongside the game craze, they have foundations in some fundamentally different technologies. They're newer, but I see them as their own technological construct, and I see us often confounding the two when we talk about something like WoW. It's a VW, but its centerpiece is a richly interwoven game.

I think that game design, see especially Raph's straightforward discussion of happy feel-good brain sauce, gets kids excited in a way that we can tap for learning. I'm afraid that we might not tease these two technologies apart as much as we should.

Just throwing that out there, and I'm excited to see what UWM comes up with.

[azzie]

2.

In regard to September 10th, 2007 article on http://popcosmo.org/

Actually the number of individuals engaging in so called number crunching increases exponentially among those communities - in this case, WoW top-end guilds - who try to "achieve" something in the virtual world. Definitely an area worth delving into establishing the nature of cause-->aim-->result dynamics.

[Mark Chen]

3.

I'm curious what data you're collecting and how you're analyzing it. When I did my WoW study of an MC raid, I collected text chat and video/audio (FRAPS) of specific boss encounters. What was cool was that the raid I was in was learning the instance, so I saw a lot of stumbling and learning there. But I ask about you because I want help analyzing and figuring out how to code stuff. :) I can share my data with you if you'd like...