Writing+Something+Together


 * Mike (10-19-10):**

I see 3 advantages of collaborating with our 10-man seminar team. 1) Multiple perspectives of what is "taken as shared" (us all doing the same thing, differently) 2) Many hands make light work (us all doing different things) 3) Strength in numbers. If we can form a consensus, that message may be more persuasive than any of us working alone.

To optimize the benefits of these 3 advantages and avoid the down-sides of trying to work as a 10-man team, may I suggest the following: 1) We select a small set of articles that we all read and discuss in class and likely reference in our collaborative written work 2) As we did with the meta-tag exercise, we continue to create individual piece-work and sub group assignments 3) We begin to compose text that will represent our consensus ideas-- and expand as we go along.



**Why can attempts to make learning like a video game, fail? Consider the story of //Arden: World of Shakespeare// 2007.**
 * Jerry 11/16**
 * Non Midterm Question about //Arden//**

Educators who try to make video games seem to be positioned in a difficult situation. Ideally, they’re trying to leverage the engaging and fun qualities of video game play in their attempt to foster learning and purposeful instruction. These endeavors inherently draw comparisons to the best of commercial video games and the most valued of traditional education efforts; neither of which makes for a favorable matchup for the efforts of a technologically innovative academic. The academic creator of //Arden, the World of Shakespeare// secured $250,000 worth of funding for an educational video game that ultimately wasn’t fun for players (Naone, 2007). Compare that budget with the amount of capital that commercial video game developers invest in their titles. Blizzard spent over $100 million to develop //World of Warcraft// (Corrections, 2010). According to a recent industry research report, the average budget for a video game that runs on just one of the current generation platforms (such as the X-BOX 360, PlayStation 3, or Wii) is $10 million, and between $18 - $28 million for multiple platforms (Meloni, 2010). Nathaniel McClure, a developer who worked on big budget games like //Call of Duty// and //Star Wars: Jedi Knight 2// before starting his own game company, voiced that frustration in a recent interview (Cipriano, 2010). McClure felt that his smaller budgeted games draw unfair comparisons to the landmark titles with large budgets, and that the public has less general understanding of the production budgets associated with games. “You are on the same shelf as //GTA// [//Grand Theft Auto//], //COD// [//Call of Duty//], //HALO// and all the rest of the ‘bigs’ so even though your budget was 1/20th of them, it doesn’t matter, you will be compared to them.” Educational video games face challenges unique to their medium, as well as the challenges that e-learning faces in general. Zemsky and Massy (2004a) published an informative report that investigates the slow adoption of electronic learning in higher education along with the failed promise of an e-learning revolution (note: for a brief summary of the 76 page report, see Zemsky and Massy, 2004b). The authors claim that many e-learning efforts have been designed in accordance with a specific instructor’s unique curriculum. Video games and other types of e-learning software products have not been configurable offerings that can be adapted to apply to a general field. Rather, they are customized one-offs that take lots of time and development without facilitating efficient diffusion. Also, instructors have generally failed to designers games and applications that focus on student needs and desires. Zemsky and Massy (2004a) claim that three misguided assumptions have derailed e-learning in general. The first assumption belies an “if we build it they will come” mentality, suggesting that students will quickly realize the value of an educational technology, leading to a rapid diffusion (p. 44). Innovative educators create a product and make it available without necessarily researching the affordances or giving the instructions and deployment strategies that would allow other instructors to utilize the technology. The second failed assumption is based on the notion that students will “take to e-learning like ducks to water” as their love of technology used for commercial entertainment will carry over to instructional offerings (p. 48). This view assumes that all students are devoted video gamers who see computers and technology as ideal way to learn, which would be an idealistic misperception. The final assumption, that “e-learning will force a change in how we teach” (p. 52), although Zemsky and Massy’s investigation suggests that changes have only occurred when institutions have provided faculty with technical support, the freedom to develop projects as they see fit, and motivation by way of extra financial compensation for developing materials over the summer. Applying Zemksy and Massy’s (2004a) e-learning report to educational video games might explain why //Arden, World of Shakespeare// as the game failed. Edward Castronova is a telecommunications professor at Indiana University whom would be considered an early adoptor of technology. According to his personal webpage, he teaches about video game design and is devoted to using video game environments as virtual laboratories (Castronova, 2009). As an early adoptor, he was willing to take risks and develop a video game that would not only teach students about Shakespeare, but double as a virtual lab for collecting data. As Zemsky and Massy (2004a) describe similar efforts, big risks are likely to result in failure. With relatively limited resources, no generally accepted rules or guidelines for what such a game would resemble, and nothing resembling a prescribed formula for success, the development of //Arden// was facing an epic battle. If Castronova and the game developers assumed that learners would play //Arden// because they like computer games, that they’d learn Shakespeare because computers and games offer a preferred method of educational delivery, and that other educators would be motivated to revolutionize their teaching style once they saw the game, then Zemsky and Massy (2004a) would have another case study where e-learning was thwarted. It would seem that instructors who wish to use video games to teach have a difficult task ahead of them. They can try to find educational affordances in commercial games that appeal to audiences, or they can take the risks to try and capture lightning in a bottle by developing a student-centered game with the right mix of pedagogical expertise, creativity, and technological savvy. Some of the most engaging and successful commercial games such as the //Civilization// series (Squire, 2005) offer level editors and others methods for modifying the game that can allow educators and students the opportunity to configure the game to their needs. Perhaps educators should be seeking to use methods like that to reap the benefits of big budget commercial research and development with nearly as much cost. Rather than race against //HALO// and //Call of Duty//, educators might draft along behind them, using the effort of the commercial developers to help pull e-learning along.

Cipriano, J. (2010). //Former ‘Call of Duty’ producer thinks all games aren’t created equal - Developer pop quiz #12.// Retrieved from [|__http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2010/11/12/call-of-duty-man-vs-wild-developer-pop-quiz/__] Corrections & amplifications. (2010, July 23). //The Wall Street Journal//, p. A2. Castronova, E. (2009). Personal website. Retrieved from November 16, 2010 from [|__http://mypage.iu.edu/~castro/home.html__]  Meloni, W. (2010). //The ups and downs//. Retrieved from [|__http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs036/1102527936265/archive/1102919901057.html__] Squire, K.D. (2005). Changing the game: What happens when videogames enter the classroom?. //Innovate 1(6)//. Zemsky, R., & Massy, W.F. (2004a). //Thwarted innovation: What happened to elearning// //and why//. Final Report for The Weatherstation Project of The Learning Alliance at the University of Pennsylvania. Retrieved from [|__http://www.irhe.upenn.edu/Docs/Jun2004/ThwartedInnovation.pdf__] Zemsky, R., & Massy, W. (2004). Why the e-learning boom went bust. //The// //Chronicle of Higher Education, 50//(44), B6-B8.