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.
