Ben DeVane

Biography

Photo of Ben DeVane

Ben DeVane is a doctoral student in the GLS group at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research generally surveys the role that the cultures and identities of young people can play in the design of games for learning. His dissertation, titled Rethinking “Hip Hop Tycoon”: Social Identity, Youth Culture, and the Design of Games for Learning, critically examines the design of new media learning environments in relation to the collective identities of youth. This project aims to identify and develop a set of “sociocultural design tools” that help design researchers create third-space learning environments, which allow for a dialogue between school-based knowledge and the cultures and identities of participants.

Ben has been a prominent part of a number of GLS research projects. Together with Kurt Squire and Shree Durga, Ben helped run the CivWorld project, a 4-year-long historical game-based learning center for low-income youth. Additionally, he’s worked quite a bit on the design of mobile games for learning with the Local Games Lab design team at the University of Wisconsin.

An avid gamer, Ben very much wants Ghostcrawler to understand that dedicated single-target healing classes absolutely should have unique mechanics for mana regeneration.

Sessions