Culture: October 2005 Archive Page

Serious Games Summit DC 2005Dolly Joseph and Mable Kinzie: Boys [sic] and Girls [sic] Game Play Preferences: Survey Results (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

I’m hemmed into an awkward back corner, so I hope the presentation’s good, since I won’t be able to get out easily.

I didn't catch the speaker's name at first, but it was Dolly Joseph speaking alone, about work that she and Mabel Kinzie did at the University of Virginia. She began with the thick theoretical grounding that I find comforting in an academic presentation -- though the use of “Pedagogy” in Tim Holt’s presentation as a term of insult used by a bully suggests the tension between academics and designers).

Joseph made multiple references to her dissertation... she invited the audience to interrupt with questions, working her way professionally and methodically through her slides, occasionally referring apologetically to information that she was not covering. That did spark a lot of requests for clarification from the audience. I'd like to see more of this study as it develops.

I found the very small statistical sample to be troubling -- 20 students for the survey, and just four for in-depth profiles. In addition the survey was a proxy -- measuring what students said about games, not actually measuring their reaction to games. For instance, rather than giving the students the chance to play four different games, and then observing how much time they spent on each game, the students were instead asked to answer a question about what kind of hypothetical games they would like.

To her credit, Joseph didn't make any grandiose claims about her findings -- she freely admitted the risks associated with making claims on such a small data set, though she did on several occasions express frustration that the data confirmed multiple stereotypes about children. If the data had challenged rather than confirmed those sterotypes, would she have presented her findings differently? (For more on gender and desing, see Utopian Entrepreneur, in which Brenda Laurel describes the flak she got from some feminists who were horrified that her company designed games for girls, and catered specifically to the friendship-related issues that are so important to girls.

What follows are my lightly-edited liveblogging notes.

She was building on her own research on the use of popular culture in education, and mentioned comic books.

Hm…. the presentation is based on comparisons between the activity of two different game camps in Charlottesville, Va., offered under the title “Got Game”.

A survey of the participants of two camps, featuring feedback gathered from a total of 21 participants. While I rather like the idea of having kids give feedback through surveys, journals, and a “video confessional,” that’s just 21 kids – not even a whole middle school class. That’s a pretty small sample to use, and the arbitrary choice of four out of these 21 students leads to problems. As long as a study doesn’t use this kind of profiling as evidence to support a statistical conclusion, I’m perfectly happy hearing what we can learn from the analysis.

The researcher chose four children to profile, with different ethnic backgrounds, learning styles, and gaming preferences.

• One student who liked games with clear goals and good positive feedback and strong closure, and thus liked a game called Bioscopia, which the researcher presented as like Myst. “None of us understood why it was fun.”
  
• Another student frequently asked “What is the point of this game?” Didn’t like educational goals embedded within the gameplay, she wanted to know what she was supposed to learn.
  
• Yet another student preferred collaboration during gameplay, liked controlling social interactions and adaptable goals.
  
• A fourth student gravitated towards complex, realistic problems, with an urban aesthetic, liked action and conflict. Liked to set his own goals.

All four of the profiled campers were proficient in “active play” – under the pressure of time, with rapid character birth and rebirth, starting over from the same point, and dichotomous storylines (good/evil). Educational games that included this kind of play were answered highly. Kids were not fooled by games that inserted quiz questions as barriers.

Explorative play – part of the game world is initially hidden; travel through physical space is important; discovering new areas leads to new challenges. Only one profiled camper liked this.

Problem-solving – Discreet challenges with set goals; hierarchical or parallel, multiple challenges that are generally independent. All of the four students enjoyed these. Clear challenges and readily apparent successes and failures, consequences are apparent. Some educational games are insufficiently challenging for middle-school children. Assembling puzzle-pieces or other simple tasks were not addressing the higher cognitive abilities of the advanced students.

Srategic play – long-term manipulation of resources; multiple pathways; greater complexity 2 of the 4 liked this mode; few educational games employ the open boundaries of this kind of gameplay – the complexity might be too challenging.

Social play – Intra-game, multi-player, and collaborative. Social play was not implicit in any of the games surveyed games.

Said the kids “were wild for” the idea of playing an online social game, but that element wasn’t part of any of the games tested.

Results: Design Suggestions (after looking at case studies of 4 children, from a pool of 21)


I asked the speaker to clarify – these are four suggestions for games that the researcher wishes would exist, because they contain elements that she says these fours students would like. [The ideological force behind the suggestions are at least as interesting as the gameplay suggestions themselves.]

1. Cures of the Rainforest: Goal – find plants with potential curative properties within the rainforest. Put together a party with characters who have certain background details. Teaching flora and fauna. [But wouldn’t a game that presented the political and economic choices that must be made by the government of a third-world country that possesses rainforests. Issues related to the economic dependence on tourism, poaching, the jobs of people who might be employed by a local logging company, the agenda of a Hollywood celebrity whose presence on the team would increase publicity but displace a scientist… ]
   
2. Vigilante P.I. – “Solve crimes and bring corrupt businessmen to justice.” Strategy and problem-solving, using mental powers and a bit of muscle. Forensics, chemistry, health hazards. (You would be able to shoot.) A question from the audience: Did you get backlash from suggesting shooting a person would be an appropriate element of a game?
   
3. Butterfly Babies – “Collect, breed, and ‘grow’ butterflies.” “Create a pretty butterfly, but use science to do it.” Biology, genetics, lab procedures.
   
4. Zoo Rescue – “Free a trapped zookeeper by traveling through a maze-like zoo.” Teaching biology and ecology, solving puzzles that lead you through passageways. Surprised to find a child who liked that kind of gameplay.
   

In response to a question I asked about the ideological decisions behind the game design choices, the researcher said that students who were worried about their on financial situation were more worried about saving their neighborhood; those students who had the luxury of worrying about the world did.

Analysis of a survey of the 20 children who participated in the study.

Boys more likely to play on consoles, girls more likely to play on computers.

Both genders preferred to play their own genders and ethnicities.

Girls preferred thinner female characters.

Boys preferred games in the street or sports fields, girls prefer games set in a mall to a meadow. (This result sparked a flurry of questions from the audience, that eventually established that participants were given a survey to take home, and for this particular question were asked to say which of the following four choices would be their favorite setting for a game: streets, sports, mall, and meadow.)

I don’t know how the following was determined, but boys preferred saving adults and senior citizens, girls would rather save young children. (I’m actually just as curious to know more about this item, but since I was one of the questioners about the previous item, I kept my mouth shut so the presenter could get through the material.)

The uncanny valley itself is where dwell monsters, in the classic sense of the word. Frankenstein’s creation, the undead, the ingeniously twisted demons of animé and their inspirations from legend and myth, and indeed all the walking terrors and horrors of man’s imagining belong here. In essence, they tend to be warped funhouse-mirror images of humanity, and many if not most share one or both of a pair of common traits. --Dave Bryant --The Uncanny Valley

Bryant presents the work of Masahiro Mori, who noted that people like dolls and toys that represent humans, but that as these items start to look and behave more human, there is a sudden drop in the graph. [Correcting that last bit, which got cut off.]

Now, I'd have to look into Mori's work more closely to determine exactly what he was measuring, or why he chose to see a connection between these objects:

1. industrial robot (slightly positive)
   
2. android (more positive)
   
3. moving corpse (most negative)
   
4. prosthetic hand (somewhat negative)
   
5. handicapped person (neutral)
   
6. bunraku puppet (most positive so far)
   
7. unhealthy person (higher than the previous one)
   
8. healthy person (even higher)
   

When you list them in that order, you get a positive "emotional response" curve from the industrial robot to the andriod, and then you get the "uncanny valley" -- that is, the huge drop in the graph -- for "moving corpse," followed by an upward sweep towards "healthy person."

But what is it about a moving corpse that necessitates that it should be placed to the right of an android on the above scale? The "valley" disappears if you simply sort the items in a different order, like this:

1. moving corpse (lowest)
   
2. prosthetic hand
   
3. handicapped person (netural)
   
4. industrial robot
   
5. android
   
6. bunraku puppet
   
7. unhealthy person
   
8. healthy person (highest)
   

My point is not that Bryant is somehow being dishonest, or that Mori's work was somehow unscientific. But the choice to arrange objects in order to create a visual "ucanny valley" in the graph of emotional responses is a rhetorical device, designed to draw attention to a particular measurement and to control the context in which that measurement is presented.

I wonder how an English professor would feel spending a week in a physics lab. Not about the scientific work, but about the frequent, ongoing interaction between students and peers, post-docs and faculty. Scientists see each other in the lab, if not daily, then at least weekly. They have frequent lab meetings, colloquia and interaction with scholars at other universities around joint research. --Gina Hiatt --We Need Humanities Labs (Inside Higher Ed)

I agree that academic life in the humanities can be isolating and lonely. While my Ph.D. is in literature, I found myself hanging out in the library's Java programming lab, where I put in most of the hours of a research assistantship, and drinking in the collegiality in what was at the time the school's Engineering Writing Centre.

Those were great experiences. I also had an experience that was, if not actually hellish, like a visit to the world of "Office Space," and a living lab in which I learned how managers can alienate and undercut the work of the managed. Of course I liked the money, and everything worked out for me in the end, but quite frankly, most work in the humanities IS solitary. I realize that hard and serious work is done in group environments, but in the humanities we don't first *do* research and *then* write it up -- typically the writing *is* the research, along with the requisite reading, and most of us need quiet and some control over our schedule in order to get that work done. I can't imagine going to an office 9-5, and punching in, just so I could start reading "Hamlet".

I got through it all just fine, and I welcome the collegiality in play at my current job. I think of all the grad students whose work I know of via the blogosphere, and I imagine how different my own grad experience would have been if I'd had access to the kind of online support groups I see in action everyday online.

At what point did the carving of pumpkins turn into a "cute" event? When did boys stop carving pumpkins and moms start? Where did we lose touch with one of the years coolest events? --ExtremePumpkins.com

Don't miss the story of carving "Carrie".

Via Machina Memorialis.

--All Time 100 Novels (Time)

I've read thirty of these, which is embarrassing for an English professor, but when I remind myself that my literary specialty is plays, I feel less guilty. Plenty of contemporary ones I've heard of but never got to.

Especially because of the confusing "all time" in the title, I wonder why they chose 1923 as the starting point, Is that because all works from 1922 and before are no longer protected by copyright?

Currently I work a very WIDE room for my freshman composition class. I'd estimate it's about four seats deep and ten seats wide. When I lead a standard class discussion, I have to march the length of the room -- from the door to the window at the far end -- and project my voice rather loudly when I'm on one side or the other. But that doesn't bother me. What's troubling is that it spreads the students far apart from each other. It divides them; and there is a sort of "faction" mentality that seems evident to me when debates get hot: one side argues against the other, from the comfortable distance of the double-wide trailer sized room.

You don't have to be a communications theorist to recognize that students tend to territorialize their space in a learning environment. --Musical Chairs (Pedablogue)

Last fall, whenever a student got up to give an oral presentation, I would sit in their vacated seat. I enjoyed the chance to see the room from so many different perspectives.

This great entry on classroom space got me thinking a little more about how my students' relationships with each other in the blogosphere affects the in-class dynamic.

In the past, when I've offered a free, no-bad-consequences draft review, I'm always disappointed at how few students take me up on it. I did notice that some of the same students who wouldn't submit rough drafts would have at least something prepared for an oral report. Perhaps they don't mind getting a zero on a rough draft when I'm the only one who knows they didn't do the work, but when I call on their name for their oral presentation, they didn't want to have to say "I'm not prepared" in front of their peers.

I thought I'd try to put this phenomenon to use, and started planning informal oral presentations a day or two before a rough draft was due. I eased the freshmen into it by letting them present on a personal topic of their own choice, so they would feel more comfortable presenting. For all my classes, I made it clear I wouldn't mark them down for saying "um" or for fidgeting.

While I saw the oral presentations as a way for students to try out new ideas without necessarily churning out pages and pages of detailed support, and while I thought the student papers improved markedly after we workshopped the thesis statements and supporting ideas the students floated during their informal presentations, too often the students were simply focused on getting through the presentation.

Displaced from the comfortable anonymity of their accustomed seat, students felt too vulnerable to appreciate constructive criticism. I graded the oral presentations very generously, because I wanted to reward and encourage the process rather than evaluate the product, but the anxieties students felt about performing made their way into their evaluations at the end of the course. Students didn't mention how much better their writing was as a result of their oral ordeals. Some even complained that their peers' presentations were so lame and repetitive that they would have preferred me to lecture more. My efforts to create a more student-centered learning environment seemed to invite a backlash. So a little reorganization was clearly in order.

This term, I've drastically reduced my reliance on formal student presentations. I let students know I don't want them to enter the classroom as a blank slate. In my lit classes, I've been distributing the teaching task, diffusing it among the whole student body, making it part of the routine environment of the classroom.

Each student needs to prepare an "agenda item" they have prepared in advance, and that they will be ready to share if called upon. I ask them to post a brief entry on their blog, 24 hours before class, in which they offer a quotation from the assigned reading, and state what their "agenda item" is -- that is, what they plan to talk about, when called on in class. Then, they bring to class a 200-word reflection, that mentions by name a student whose blogged idea has helped them develop their ideas about the assigned text.

Friday morning in "Drama as Literature," we were discussing the first two acts of Hamlet. Because I checked the student blogs before class, I already knew the students were talking about Hamlet's madness, Gertrude’s complicity, and the dramatic effectiveness of the ghost. The first student who spoke mentioned being inspired by a second student's blog entry. The second student then mentioned being inspired by a third student's entry. This went on for a string of six or eight students, for about fifteen minutes, each building on what the previous student had said, before the first pause in the discussion.

During that pause, I called attention to what had just happened, and praised the students for sustaining the conversation on their own.

When the students in this class give informal presentations, I split them up into small groups, and send them out to a courtyard or patio. I float around and try to listen in on the discussion, but my physical absence reminds them to think of their peers as their primary audience. Several students blogged about how much they enjoyed the experience, and the informal reflections they submitted afterwards were overwhelmingly positive.

Once when I was late to class due to a domestic incident (I told the class it involved a shower curtain, a large spider, and a potty-training toddler), I sent word via the division secretary that I'd be a bit late, and the students went around the room and shared their agenda items. When I did show up, they seemed quite pleased with themselves for having been so productive on their own.

I'm a little spoiled, since all the students in that class are English majors. I'm also teaching two sections of a lit seminar and a news writing course that includes students who are less than thrilled to be there. While some students are enthusiastic and dependably well-prepared, it's clear that some students haven't made the class a top priority. That's okay -- I got a C in my college Latin course, and it wasn't because I disliked the subject or the teacher, it was just because I chose to put my time and effort elsewhere.

The news writing class is changing the focus from a series of short exercises to some longer, more in-depth units, so I'm hoping I can use some of blog-enhanced classroom discussion techniques. In the next five or so weeks, we'll work our way chapter-by-chapter through two books, and I plan to have the students sign up for a particular chapter, and let a different student take the class through the "agenda item" sequence each time. At 32 students, that's large by SHU standards, but as a writing class, it's large by any standard. I'm going to let students know I expect them to participate regularly, and I'll start asking them to evaluate and reflect on their own contributions to the online and in-class discussion.

When I switched places with the students who gave oral presentations last year, I was trying to send a message that, for the next 20 minutes, I was just one of the students. But the act of trading places with the students emphasized the difference between us. When I wasn't sitting in a student space, I was The Teacher.

By asking all students to prepare agenda items, I am distributing the authoritarian role of the agenda-setter. It is sometimes stressful for me, since I have to work twice as hard weaving connections between the student agenda items, filling in gaps with 5-minute mini-lectures on catharsis or the role of the raisonneur.

I still haven't worked in "anagnorisis" or "the fourth wall," and earlier in the week, three students in a row asked me a question that stumped me. There were three high school seniors visiting the classroom that day, and I kept having to admit my ignorance. I'm teaching without a net when I let the students set the agenda -- but the 24-hour lead time really helps. I have time to prepare those 5-minute spurts of info, when I notice the students are hungry for background information on the Protestant reformation, or if they're puzzled by a mythological reference, or they're curious about the author's biography.

Rather than letting the students take turns being the "sage on the stage," I'd like them to take turns being the "guide on the side," and shouldering the responsibility. In a typical class, some student has usually checked the Wikipedia entry for an author's biography, or has read the author before, or got inspired and did some outside research.

Musical chairs is a good metaphor, but I'd like to think of removing the empty chairs that separate the students, until every student is connected with his or her peers all the time. If we all swap roles and trade ideas as rapidly and smoothly as my lit students did in Friday morning's Hamlet class, I think we'll all enjoy the result.

Subject: The expository lecture as the principal means of instruction.

Inciter: The expository lecture is simply a talking textbook that has endured too long since the invention of printing.

Subject: The student-selected curriculum.

Inciter: According to the interest theory of value, the value of academic subjects is not intrinsic. It is bestowed on them by the interest that students bring to them. It follows that students should study only those subjects in which they are already interested.

Subject: The purpose of a college education.

Inciter: "If then a practical end must be assigned to a university course, I say that it is that of training good members of society. ... It aims ... at cultivating the public mind, at supplying true principles to popular enthusiasms and fixed aims to popular aspirations, ... at facilitating the exercise of political power, and refining the intercourse of private life." (John Henry Newman in The Idea of a University) --F. Champion Ward --Filling a Gap in the Doctoral Process (Chronicle)

Now that we're at the midpoint in the semester, I think my literature students have for the most part grasped the idea that a college lit course demands more than the ability to summarize plots, analyze characters, and apply the themes of a literary work to the student's own life. Their high school teachers praised those skills, and for students who haven't taken any lit since high school, getting them to make the shift is a challenge.

I first asked them to turn to close reading, so that they can practice supporting their claims with evidence from the texts, rather than details from their own lives or personal opinions about love, sin, gender, etc.

Yes, a paper on one possible meaning of the titular bird in Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" makes a good topic, but such a paper isn't an argument unless it considers alternative views.

The students have submitted their rough drafts for their first big paper, and so far the papers have been very rough indeed -- but I expected that. It's a struggle to get students to collect a bunch of academic articles first, and then build an argument based on the sources they've been able to find, rather than having them write out the opinion they held before they conducted any research, then have them looking through the databases to "find quotes to support" the opinions to which they've already committed several pages of nicely-crafted prose.

Given that the rough draft is only worth a few measly percentage points, I've been pleased with the effort most students have put into it. Several students who got the draft "wrong" revised it after I gave them initial feedback, and submitted it along with a note saying they weren't asking for credit, they just wanted to know whether they were now closer to the right track.

I've warned students about the "bottom of page 3" problem, in which students who aren't quite sure what their argument is churn out three pages of general fluff before they hit on a really good idea, which they develop for half a page before tacking on a conclusion that basically says, "Therefore, this paper has [repeat introduction here]."

I wonder if these examples of "inciters" will be of use, as we try to move from a collection of interesting observations to a paper that has been written entirely in order to defend a particular thesis, so that the reader won't discover on page 4 what the paper is really about, but will rather be introduced to that controlling idea in the thesis paragraph, if not in the very title of the paper.

I like the two-tiered set of goals described by my colleague Cynthia, a professor of psychology. "I approached my sabbatical with two sets of expectations: the must-do project and the wish-I-could-do projects," she said. "I accomplished the former, but didn't get to the latter, unfortunately."

I happen to know that, if I set low goals, that's all I will achieve. So I'm aiming high, but trying to find balance between my work and my personal life in a couple of ways. --Lee Tobin McClain --Going on Sabbatical (Chronicle)

Lee is my colleague down the hall. Since she's not been coming to English faculty meetings this year, we're giving her all the tasks nobody else will volunteer for. (Just kidding!)

I've been planning to ask for a temporary teaching load reduction to invest time in an open-source educational videogame concept I've been kicking around for a year. It's time to get cracking on that proposal -- once I've turned in next midterm grades.

For the rest of the week, it's marking, marking, marking.

Audience members, mostly senior-level editors and writers for women's magazines, joined the panelists in voicing many familiar complaints about the industry: too many skinny models, even more emaciated feature stories, and too much advertiser influence on editorial content. Laurie Abraham, executive editor of Elle magazine, however, had something else on her mind. The worst thing about women's magazines, she asserted during the panel discussion, is how much "we lie about sex."

Under normal circumstances, a roomful of experienced journalists might rise up in outrage at being called liars. But Abraham's statement was met with nods of guilty agreement and mildly embarrassed "tell me something I don't know" shrugs. No one denied the charge.

This is not Watergate, of course, or even Monica-gate. Yet these ubiquitous stories about sex are presented as journalism, chock full of analysis and quotes, and they are surely believed by many of their readers. They are a formidable cultural force, shaping and reinforcing our attitudes about men and women, orgasms and relationships. Women's magazines run scrupulously reported and fact-checked articles on such subjects as breast cancer and women under the Taliban. Do they have a problem with sex?

Well, yes, it turns out, they do. Many writers, editors, and fact-checkers involved with these sex articles (most of whom asked that their identities be protected with the top-secrecy accorded Seymour Hersh's CIA sources) agreed that the editorial standards for them are abysmal. --Liza Featherstone --Sex, Lies, and Women's Magazines (Columbia Journalism Review)

I've blogged this before, but the CJR reorganized its archives, breaking the link. So here it is again.

Jack: So .... [pause]
Jack: So he won then. [pause]
Jill: Yes.
Jack: Yes. [longer pause]
Jack: He waited long enough.
Jill: Yes.
Jack: Yes ... he did. [pause]
Jill: Yes, he certainly waited long enough.
Jack: Words. [pause]
Jill: What?
Jack: Words, in conversion, he was good at that. [pause]
Jill: Yes ... he waited long enough.
Jack: I think... [pause]
Jill: ...and pauses, he was good at that too.
Jack: Yes.
Jill: Yes. [pause]
Jack: Yes. [pause] I think his word/time ratio was the smallest ever heard.
Jill: Yes.
Jack: Yes. [pause]
Jill: Yes, he waited long enough...
Jack: Well done, that's what they say...
Jill: Yes, they do say that...
Jack: Well done, like the toast... [long pause]... How's your cornflakes, then?
... and so on..
John Grady, Wokingham, Berks,UK --Pinter wins Nobel literary prize (BBC)

From a comment appended to the article.

The way I read a letter 's this:
'T is first I lock the door,
And push it with my fingers next,
For transport it be sure.

And then I go the furthest off
To counteract a knock;
Then draw my little letter forth
And softly pick its lock.

Then, glancing narrow at the wall,
And narrow at the floor,
For firm conviction of a mouse
Not exorcised before,

Peruse how infinite I am
To -- no one that you know!
And sigh for lack of heaven, -- but not
The heaven the creeds bestow.

Emily DickinsonThe way I read a letter 's this (Emily Dickinson's Poetry)

As my literature students have been discussing the two years Thoreau spent living in the woods, I've reflected on what it might have meant to be part of a society where people didn't expect to be able to contact each other immediately and get instant responses.

When will I *ever* get an e-mail that makes me withdraw this far, in order to prepare myself for the emotions I expect the e-mail will bring?

Update:

The way I read an e-mail 's this:
'T is first I maximize
The Outlook window that reveals
The message to my eyes.

In my Picassa files I find
A slideshow sure to please
As I make use of reading-time
To download MP3s.

I'll quickly check my voice-mail box
And scan my server log.
I'll sync up next my PDA
And weed my spam-marred blog.

A multi-tasking mambo man --
Digitally alive --
I read "Dear Sir" and stop, for then
Two more e-mails arrive.

Morgan 'Super Size Me' Spurlock at Seton Hill (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

Morgan Spurlock, whose movie Super Size Me documents what happened to his body when he ate nothing but McDonald's food for 30 days, spoke at Seton Hill earlier this evening. I asked him to autograph this burger. My journalism students were required to attend the class, and have a short article due tomorrow. I asked them to do advance research, which they were supposed to submit in class yesterday. Many of them are really getting into the assignment. More than one has asked, "Are you sure we can only write 400 words?" One showed about six pages of densely-packed notes, lamenting, "I've got about twelve sources!" There's a healthy competition among the students to get good outside sources, so that the article is more than a record of what Spurlock said tonight, but a wider article that uses Spurlock as one of several sources. The news hook is the fact that Spurlock spoke here tonight, but the article itself can be much wider in scope. I'm looking forward to seeing what the students will do with their 400 words. I hope at least some of them will blog their work. Update: Added top photo, taken by Mary Cox. Update: A few students have posted on their blog. Ashley Welker. Michael Diezmos. Leslie Rodriquez. Erin Waite.