GLS Conference Submissions

When you are ready to submit, please visit our secure submission site:

https://precisionconference.com/~gls/

The GLS 7.0 submissions deadline has been extended one week due to the citizen uprising at the Madison Capitol. All submissions are now due by 11:59 P.M. Monday 14 March 2011. Complete submission guidelines are available there, but be prepared to include:

GLS Conference Proceedings Beginning 2011!

We’re happy to announce a new GLS Conference Proceedings beginning in 2011. If you would like your submission to be considered for the proceedings, please indicate your interest within the submission system. If accepted, the editors will contact you in March for a more complete paper (5–10 pages based on a GLS template) or short game design statement and game artifact to be completed in time for the conference in June.

Session Formats

Presentation: An individual 15–20 minute presentation. We’ll cluster two or three presentations into each session, and assign a session discussant to draw out common themes and to field audience questions. Standard format as most conferences. Let us know, though, if you have any special needs for your presentation.

Symposium: Like a presentation session, but crafted by you to tackle a specific theme or issue related to conference themes. Format can vary from a cluster of three or more presentations with a designated discussant to a debate-style moderated panel — it all depends on how creative you want to be. Every symposium ends with audience Q&A, but we especially welcome symposia that promote plenty of engagement and interaction throughout.

Worked Example: A worked example is an innovative format for field building, collaboration, and publication based on work by James Paul Gee and Sasha Barab. Worked examples involve proposing an exemplar for what one believes could be an important argument, method, model, or finding and doing so in a manner that reveals both the underlying idea and the conditions through which the idea takes on its meaning. The author or authors work through their reasoning, often using multimedia tools, to explicate an idea in public, lucid, and cross-disciplinary accessible terms. The point is to invite others to comment, add to one’s example, or connect their own related examples so as to a create an emerging network of examples that simultaneously evolve the ideas central to the particular example and that grow a networked community of ongoing collaboration. Rather than presenting a final closed argument or solved problem, a worked example functions as an “invitation” into conversation with other scholars, as well as for policy makers, funders, and educators in some cases. One can think of worked examples—or what we could also call “working examples”—as a “provocative object” for calibrating like minds. WHOA

Workshop: An interactive, hour-long (or longer) workshop in a single session, during which presenters engage the audience directly; they are highly participatory and include discussion and debriefing following the activity. If an hour is not enough time, tell us how much time you need.

Fireside Chats: A special hour-long session that fosters informal discussion among a smaller group on a specific topic of interest. Each chat is organized around a special guest (e.g., Gandhi) or theme (e.g., the low-down on “game addiction” theory and research). Looks like an official way to chat up colleagues? Precisely.

Well Played (NEW!): These sessions will focus on the experience of playing specific videogames, along with discussing the experience of designing and developing the games as well. Sequences from the games will be analyzed in detail in order to illustrate and interpret how the design of various components enable players to learn how to play through the game successfully, as well as how the design of the various elements combine together to create a fulfilling gameplay experience. Sessions will explore narrative development and game design, highlighting overarching themes and game play mechanics and providing a variety of perspectives on the value of games. These sessions are inspired by the ETC Press Well Played book series, and accepted proposals will also be considered for upcoming Well Played journal, that is based on this format of conversational scholarship. The goal of these sessions is to help further develop and define a literacy of games as well as a sense of their value. Videogames are a complex medium that merits careful interpretation and insightful analysis.

Poster Session: GLS 7.0 will again feature our Massively Multiplayer In-Person Poster Session (MMIPPS?) — over delicious dinner and open bar — ideal for those who wish to engage in informal, face-to-face discussions about their research, with colleagues and other conference attendees. We encourage the submission of ongoing and in-progress research for the poster session.

Micropresentation: Originally inspired by the wildly successful “Pecha Kucha” format from Japan, micropresentations are short talks designed to allow more people to present on a select theme while, at the same time, increasing the intensity and focus of the presentations themselves. Each speaker is allowed 20 slide images and given 20 seconds for each slide for a total of exactly 6 minutes 40 seconds for their entire presentation. (Oh yes — we will time you that closely.) The result is an action-packed ride through the core claims of each speaker followed by summative observations from the crack ninja discussant and direct conversation with the audience. It’s a fairly new format and all the fashion. GO GO GO!

Hall of Failure (NEW!): There is little incentive in academics (industry as well, although to a lesser extent) to share our failures, yet without such dialogue there is no way to learn from one another’s mistakes. At this year’s GLS 2011, we are hosting a special series of presentations dedicated to “interesting failures”. Highly competitive, the Hall of Failure will feature ideas that should have worked but didn’t, presented by the forward-thinking people who dared to try. Session discussion will interrogate why they didn’t work and lessons learned, and content featured in the Hall will be highlighted in a special section of the GLS Conference Proceedings.

Big Debates (NEW!): Our field is now at a point where key issues have emerged in the and, with them, identifiable positions on those issues. We believe it’s time to develop public, structured, moderated conversation on those key topics chosen by the community (e.g., transfer, embedded assessments). Participants will be asked to prepare position statements in advance and the debate events will be carefully moderated and interactive among participants with the goal of, if not necessarily settling the issue, then at least identifying its entailments and mapping its problem space.

Game-Related Artwork or Installation (NEW!): Beginning this year, the GLS conference will host a curated art exhibit in our on-site dedicated gallery. We welcome your creative works that in any way resemble, incorporate, or are inspired by game characters, themes or motifs, or are entirely newly-imagined game-like forms. Original playable games, creative works that blur the line between art objects and games, interactive art installation (as it relates to game play and game design), art objects that explore the form of games or forms from games as well as their conceptual, intellectual, social, and psychological implications of games, and art that challenges the very idea of static art objects in the age of instant and ubiquitous interactivity are welcome. Works can be two-dimensional, three-dimensional, digital, or performed. Please submit a brief description of your work and related images or digital materials for consideration. Include in the description how the work would be displayed and what technical considerations for display will be required. Shipping arrangements will be made directly with the artist.