Understanding Language and Learning in Game-Based Online Affinity Spaces through Worked Examples
Sean Duncan · Jayne Lammers · Yoonhee Lee · Jeff Beeman
Wed., June 09, 2:00–3:00, Class of ’24
Fan sites — or affinity spaces (Gee, 2004) — exist for most videogames, and popular games spawn numerous sites, with thousands of visitors. Through these sites, players may learn to use distributed knowledge networks, access sophisticated literacy texts, and engage in complex problem-solving and collaboration (e.g., Steinkuehler, 2006, 2007; Steinkuehler & Duncan, 2008). Players and designers interact on these sites, blurring professional and amateur knowledge production. Researchers have only begun investigating these communities as locations for learning, using varied methods and theoretical perspectives.
This presentation and discussion of worked examples focuses on the role of language and texts as central to learning and participation in such sites, as well as to how the sites themselves are constituted. Gee proposed that “worked examples” or “play exemplars” serve as focal points for debate, shared understanding, and further development of a field.
An exemplar can be “one application or aspect of a method or a theory, a bit of analysis, a way of combining several ideas from different disciplines, or a ‘move’ in a proposed research project or learning intervention” (Gee, 2009). Gee serves as our discussant, reacting to the presenters’ play exemplars in terms of their generativity and utility.
The first worked example illustrates the integration of specialist language learning and technical learning in a game modding community, arguing that learning the “language of technology” is essential to becoming a modder. The analysis applies Halliday’s (1975; 2004) model of systemic functional grammar to a modding tutorial and related discussion thread. The example illuminates distinctive features of specialist language in this context, including semantic and syntactic similiarities and differences to academic language, and its functions in a community of novices and experts.
The second builds on Steinkuehler and Duncan’s (2008) findings that online gaming affinity spaces can be valuable locales for informal science reasoning, by investigating how these player-driven activities relate to game designers’ intentions. This worked example presents data from a heated debate within the World of Warcraft forums and illustrates how Discursive (Gee, 2006) clashes between participants and designers are worked through, with the goal of understanding the value of scientific epistemological stances within gaming communities.
The third worked example explores game-related fan fiction, a distinctive multimodal story genre created using The Sims games as authoring tools, applying the New London Group’s (1996) concepts of multiliteracies and Design to make sense of this gaming and literacy practice. This example illustrates how Sims authors draw on (Designing) the conventions of off-line story-telling and patterns of other Sims fan fiction (Available Designs), making choices about modes of communication (Design elements) to produce unique Sims fan fiction (The Redesigned) read by others (Designing).
The last example addresses the development of Decoder Ring, a web-based content analysis tool that facilitates team-based browsing, tagging, and visualization of discussion thread data. A worked example of data from a game-related forum illustrates the application’s functionality and assumptions underlying its design, to elicit discussion of how technical tools instantiate theory, constraining as well as expanding opportunities for new insights.
References
Duncan, S. C. (submitted). World of Warcraft and “the World of Science”: Player/designer interactions in an online affinity space. Manuscript for T. Wright, D. Embrick, and A. Lukacs (Eds.), Utopic Dreams and Apocalyptic Fantasies: Playing In Virtual Realms. New York: Lexington Press.
Gee, J. P. (2004). Situated language and learning: A critique of traditional schooling. London: Routledge.
Gee, J. P. (2006). An introduction to Discourse analysis: Theory and method, 2nd. ed. New York: Routledge.
Gee, J. P. (2009). Digital media and learning as an emerging field, part II: A proposal for how to use “worked examples” to move forward. International Journal of Learning and New Media, 1(2). Retrieved from http://ijlm.net/knowinganddoing/10.1162/ijlm.2009.0012
Halliday, M. A. K. (1975). Learning how to mean. London: Edward Arnold.
Halliday, M. A. K., & Matthiessen, C. M. I. M. (2004). An introduction to functional grammar (İşlevsel Dil Bilgisine Giriş). 3d ed. London: Arnold.
New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. [Electronic version]. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60-92.
Steinkuehler, C. A. & Duncan, S. C. (2008). Scientific habits of mind in virtual worlds. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 17 (6), 530-543.