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Researcher zeroes in on kids playing RuneScape
Hey kids! Do you want to try an experiment? No, you won't get paid but you will help further scientific research through the process of "cognitive ethnography." Not interested? Hmmm, well, you do get to play video games... Oh, you are interested! Let me just get you these waivers to sign...Constance Steinkuehler is an MMO researcher studying teens and tweens in the world of RuneScape. Her research aims to find commonalities in thought process between young individuals who play MMOs. Her work will also assess the impacts of game play over a longer period on their daily lives, social relationships, and school work. Given the abundance and accessibility of games aimed at youth these days, it will be interesting to see how they influence us humans in our more impressionable years.
Spencer post-doc to study RuneScape
Constance Steinkuehler is an educational researcher studying massively multiplayer online games from a learning sciences and new literacy studies perspective and an assistant professor at the University of Winsconsin-Madison. She teaches courses on virtual worlds, research methods and, as she says on her blog, the "smart" side of popular culture. Steinkuehler has announced that she's got the Nation Academy of Education / Spencer Post-Doctorial Fellowship to do a cognitive ethnography on RuneScape. The study aims to show the educational merit of games designed for and played by youths instead of adults, which is what is typically studied, and to examine the impact of gameplay on their everyday lives, social relationships and school work.Cognitive ethnography is used to study the processes that effect the work carried out within a setting, whilst noting the effect of the material world and social context of the actions and social practices carried out. To put it in a simpler way, it studies how the social norms and social structures are created for a group of people who share a common culture, in this case RuneScape players.You can read her proposal abstract over at her blog.
Do WoW players make better citizens?
With all the negativity that mainstream media (sometimes) dishes out on video games, we always like to see when the positive stories get picked up. That's the case with today's article at The Capital Times that focuses on MMOs and their impact on society. Reporting for The Capital Times, Jeff Richgels asks, "Can massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft produce better citizens?" His article covers the work of Constance Steinkuehler, a University of Wisconsin-Madison education professor who's been studying the social dynamics inherent to MMOs, namely World of Warcraft. Her work focuses on how massively multiplayer online games expose players to a wide range of diversity. Steinkuehler's recent presentation at the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences was ultimately about how navigating that diversity makes players into better citizens, and more open to discussion with their peers.
MMO players are doing science, academic proposes
We've seen plenty of arguments in support of MMOs, claiming they improve everything from hand-eye co-ordination to math to economics to social skills. Even if some of these seem overblown, we'd rather have MMOs shown in a positive light than the alternative. Now, though, an academic from the University of Wisconsin has pointed out something which in retrospect seems obvious: gamers who engaged with difficult challenges were utilizing the scientific method in order to beat them.This didn't simply mean fighting ice beasties with fire powers, or the jolly gonzo science we've seen in the past. The gamers were coming up with specific hypotheses, testing them with empirical data, and modifying the hypotheses accordingly, using Excel spreadsheets to analyze their findings. This is, as she put it, 'the essence of science'.
More evidence: MMOs are good for you
Some believe video games dumb us down. Dr. Constance Steinkuehler isn't one of them. She's an assistant professor of Educational Communication & Technology, and she spoke at Future Play 2007, a conference on future trends in the gaming industry. In her presentation she suggested that MMOs actually improve our mental performance for both verbal and scientific tasks.Fan fiction, forum arguments about which class does more l33t DPS, and complex social groups all keep our minds active, and these things could be educational tools for children. Even the oft-criticized MMO shorthand was shown in her talk to be more complex than one might first assume.Steinkuehler also talked a bit about the roles that friendships in MMOs play in peoples' lives. She runs a gaming club for at-risk kids and hopes to use video games and teamwork to help them overcome their academic troubles. Sadly, we couldn't find a transcript of the presentation, but Gamasutra wrote up a good summary.
