PopCosmo: An Out-of-School Casual Learning Lab Based on WoW

Constance Steinkuehler · Beth King · Sarah Chu · Yoonsin Oh · Esra Alagoz · Crystle Martin · Bei Zhang

Wed., June 09, 2:00–3:00, Inn Wisconsin

In this presentation, we discuss preliminary findings from a two-year program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison based on the massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft. The goal of the program was to explore ways that instructional designers might leverage adolescents’ existing interests in games in order to engage them in practices that are both aligned with schools and meaningful in their everyday offline lives. Our basic strategy was to create a community of gamers that could act as an incubator for key practices that previous research found arose naturally as a part of unstructured, advanced gameplay. Following the lead of other games-based educational programs (Squire, DeVane, & Durga, 2008) and known characteristics of game-related indigenous online communities (Jenkins, 2006; Steinkuehler & Duncan, 2009), the program was designed to encourage distributed expertise and collective intelligence (Levy, 1999) in place of standardization as well as peer-to-peer learning in the form of modeling and networked apprenticeship. WoW’s in-game “guild” structure was used as the basis for organization in the program so that the majority of the regular, weekly contact time occurred within the virtual world and on a private online guild forum. Additional monthly face-to-face meetings (“Saturday events”) on the University campus in the GLS games lab facility were also used for more structured intentional learning activities, data collection, and assessments. The target audience was students identified as chronically disengaged (or “at risk”) in school yet highly motivated by games. Here, we present the results of our analysis of eight months of ethnographic data using a coding scheme based on the main goals of our program, including argumentation, digital media literacy, sociocultural forms of learning, and workplace skills.

References

Squire, K. D., DeVane, B., & Durga, S. (2008). Designing Centers of Expertise for Academic Learning Through Video Games. Theory Into Practice, 47(3), 240-251.

Jenkins, H., III. (2006) Convergence culture. New York: New York University Press.Steinkuehler, C. A. & Duncan, S. (2009). Informal scientific reasoning in online virtual worlds. Journal of Science Education & Technology. DOI: 10.1007/s10956-008-9120-8.

Levy, P. (1999). Collective intelligence: Mankind’s emerging world in cyberspace (R. Bononno, Trans.). Cambridge MA: Perseus Books.