Academia: November 2007 Archive Page

Jeremy Douglass has published a Creative Commons dissertation on interactive fiction. I recently brought a printout into my "Writing about Literature" class in order to help my undergrads (English majors, some of whom want to be professional writers or literature professors) see their homework assignments as points on a scale that includes books and beyond.

I ran the PDF through a text-to-speech program, and have been listening to it during my commute. I'm currently at 7 hrs 49 minutes of a 10-hr document. (I didn't include the index and the bibliography when I converted the file to sound.) 

Douglass does an excellent job acknowledging the debt that IF scholarship owes to the pioneering work of Janet Murray and Espen Aarseth (each of whom have treated IF as part of a larger study on digital narrative), and he also offers a good analysis of the full-length studies of IF by Buckles, Sloane, Montfort, and Maher.  He politely but unflinchingly points out how the limited number of IF works chosen for close readings has led to oversimplifications and assumptions in later scholarship.  Because IF is a rather obscure topic, scholars have to present a lot of formal exposition and generic exposition in order to clear a path to their more advanced insights, but Douglass moves beyond the basics very quickly, so there is much of value to ponder. (I will give it a traditional read-through when I'm finished listening to it...  depending on the audio version for the first read is an experiment that I'm rather enjoying.)

For me, the greatest pleasure in reading this work is the insightful close readings of moments, scenes, puzzles, and specific interactions that illustrate the greater theoretical point. I also felt challenged (in a good way) by his re-thinking of the categories into which the history of IF tends to be placed.  I will very likely assign at least

The Interactive Fiction (IF) genre describes text-based narrative experiences in which a person interacts with a computer simulation by typing text phrases (usually commands in the imperative mood) and reading software-generated text responses (usually statements in the second person present tense). Re-examining historical and contemporary IF illuminates the larger fields of electronic literature and game studies. Intertwined aesthetic and technical developments in IF from 1977 to the present are analyzed in terms of language (person, tense, and mood), narrative theory (Iser's gaps, the fabula / sjuzet distinction), game studies / ludology (player apprehension of rules, evaluation of strategic advancement), and filmic representation (subjective POV, time-loops). Two general methodological concepts for digital humanities analyses are developed in relation to IF: implied code, which facilitates studying the interactor's mental model of an interactive work; and frustration aesthetics, which facilitates analysis of the constraints that structure interactive experiences. IF works interpreted in extended "close interactions" include Plotkin's Shade (1999), Barlow's Aisle (2000), Pontious's Rematch (2000), Foster and Ravipinto's Slouching Towards Bedlam (2003), and others. Experiences of these works are mediated by implications, frustrations, and the limiting figures of their protagonists.

Ars Technica:

Earlier this month, Pennsylvania's Express-Times reported on a local school librarian who put up her own "Just Say No to Wikipedia" signs in the computer lab. The entire Warren Hills Regional School District in New Jersey has also blocked access from all school computers. The basic problem, according to officials, is that Wikipedia's unverified accuracy and ease of use are making it too tempting for students to use as a primary source.

Wikipedia officials certainly don't dispute that characterization and have never held the site up as a tool for academic work, except as a jumping-off point. But the New Jersey response is interesting in that it represents an extreme response to the problem.

Perhaps it's a necessary one, though. I checked in with my wife, a college professor who assigns plenty of papers to her students. Despite an unceasing stream of comments about how Wikipedia cannot be used as a scholarly source, students without fail will use it every semester and cite it in their work, even in upper-level classes. The site is just so easy to use that the temptation to do so can be overwhelming... especially when it's 1 AM and the library has closed.

Students are still citing Wikipedia even after the professor says it's not an acceptable source? If the students are simply dropping off their papers on the last day of class, and they have no chance to get feedback or correct their mistakes, then it's no wonder that each new set of students will make the same mistakes.

But if the same students keep doing it, perhaps that needs to add a homework assignment where students have to submit their sources two weeks before the paper is due, so that students who bomb that assignment have time to learn what other sources are available.

Many students have heard their teachers warn them against using the site, but only after I show them how easy it is to edit an article, and they realize that they, too, could add whatever they want, does it really sink in that they have to be critical about what they read (not just on Wikipedia, but everywhere).

Banning the site deprives them of the chance to learn that lesson.

As preparation for writing a traditional research paper, students could add to the Wikipedia entry for their school or community, or they could look for other acceptable sources and add them to the Wikipedia entry.

When students are writing about some areas of popular culture, culture, user-authored sites such as Wikipedia and Urbandictionary, or game databases like MobyGames are actually far more useful than academic sources (which take months or even years to appear).   

Regardless of the subject, a reading assignment could involve reading a discussion about "neutral point of view" or "notability" in a contested article, so that students can see for themselves just how knowledge is constructed in Wikipedia. They could compare the "neutral" Wikipedia article to a pair of articles that argue "for" or "against" a particular interpretation

The article has a great illustration -- a defenestrated couch on the ground outside the psych building. Patricia Cohen, NYT.

For decades now, critics engaged in the Freud Wars have pummeled the good doctor's theories for being sexist, fraudulent, unscientific, or just plain wrong. In their eyes, psychoanalysis belongs with discarded practices like leeching.

But to beleaguered psychoanalysts who have lost ground to other forms of therapy that promise quicker results through cheaper and easier methods, the report underscores pressing questions about the relevance of their field and whether it will survive as a practice.

Given how psychoanalytic ideas have shaped the culture, the issue reverberates far beyond the tiny cluster of psychoanalysts. They worry that the gradual disappearance of psychoanalytic theory from psychology curriculums means that those ideas are bound to be applied incorrectly as new advances are neglected.

On Gamasutra, John Hopson says academics should not bother trying to get game designers to listen to any research that doesn't translate into more money for game companies.

When a researcher presents a product team with a set of research findings and recommendations, they are asking the team to invest time and money implementing their proposal. In order to convince the audience to spend that time and money, the researcher has to show clearly how that investment is going to pay off. This needs to be something beyond "this will help players identify more strongly with the main character".

The researcher must lay out the entire impact of the idea, from the cost of implementing the proposal to the resulting changes in player experience and the metrics for measuring that impact. Getting players to identify with the main character is great, but researchers have to finish the rest of the sentence: "This will help players identify more strongly with the main character which will result in an improvement in measures of overall player satisfaction and an increase in total playing time."

By the way, if the research doesn't include specific practical recommendations or a measurable impact on the final product, don't bother trying to sell it to the industry. From the average industry professional's perspective, there are only two things of value being said in a research presentation: the recommendations and their predicted effects. Everything else, the background research, the brilliant theoretical breakthrough, the clever development of the ideas, falls on industry ears like the "wah wah" noises made by Charlie Brown's teacher.

This is, of course, very practical. Game developers have to explain to their bosses why they should attend your academic talk on the history and social value of computer games instead of the one across the hall that tests a new formula for pixel shading or introduces a new technique for creating the reflections of flickering torchlight in fountains of blood gushing from an enemy's skin. (Okay, I'm exaggerating -- but not by much.) 

In the humanities, small groups of people (often grad students who are trying to find a footing for themselves) will organize a regional conference on a particular subject, and they will do it for the practical experience of learning how to run such a conference; they will do it in order to make a name for themselves in a small, emerging field; or they will do it to call attention to a subject they themselves are passionate about.  But industry conferences are, like industry itself, about money. I don't mean that in a pejorative way. I learn quite a bit when I attend industry conferences  but I confess when I walk into an interesting session and find only a sales pitch for a product or company, I'm very disappointed. In my line of work, I most value the theory and background and insights, exactly what Hopson dismisses as "Wah wah."

Inside Higher Ed has an interview with Christine L. Borgman

The scholarly communication system has evolved over a period of centuries -- it doesn't shift quickly. Scholarly journals still look a lot like they did in the 17th century, for example. The tenure system is a much stronger driver of scholarly infrastructure than is technology. Scholars are rewarded for publishing journal articles and books, in the right places. They are not rewarded for good data management, except in a very few fields. Rewards for open access publishing are indirect, such as more citations, and recognition of these benefits has been slow to emerge.

Mike Edwards, a civilian instructor at West Point, reflects on the academic reaction to a new army field manual that plagiarizes large swaths of complex material, sometimes verbatim, from published sources. Part 1, Part 2.

The scandal, though, is this: according to anthropologist David Price, the published version of the Army's FM 3-24 on Counterinsurgency is deeply and thoroughly plagiarized, particularly in its Chapter 3, which patches together a wide range of verbatim or minimally edited passages from prominent sociological and anthropological texts without any sort of sufficient documentation in order to establish a series of definitional terms for use by officers, NCOs, and soldiers seeking to implement counterinsurgency tactics in the field.

Now, initially, when I saw this, I immediately got out all my old FMs: not a single works cited among them. David Price writes that "The cumulative effect of such non-attributions is devastating to the Manual's academic integrity," but apparently fails to grasp that this is in some ways a matter of genre: FMs are manuals for use in the field rather than the library, and the sergeants and lieutenants and captains who will put them to use are far less interested in where ideas come from than in matters of implementation. Some officers I've spoken to have echoed the observation that Army writing is community property and definitionally in the public domain, which likely contributed to the habits of mind that led to the failures of documentation. I don't believe that excuses the plagiarism -- particularly given Price's point that "The most damning element of the Manual's reliance on unattributed sources is that the Manual includes a bibliography listing of over 100 sources, yet not a single source I have identified is included" -- but it does help to explain it.

Scott McLemee writes about an intellectual brownout that came to him during a party, when he was asked to comment on a book he knew well.

People who consume two or three books a month, for example, might be less susceptible to moments of total overload than those who read two or three a week. Some situations require learning to handle texts like a meat packer carving up pigs on an assembly line. Certain skills are involved, and they are good skills to have. You can learn to wield the blade with some precision without losing a finger. But efficiency counts, because there's always another pig coming at you.

From Inside Higher Ed:

• An Enthusiast's View of Academic Blogs
• A Skeptic's Take on Academic Blogs

Jessica Mintz writes of University of Washington-Bothell professor Martha Groom's Wikipedia assignment:

"I would find these things on Wikipedia," she said, and would think, "Gosh, this is awfully thin here. I wonder if my students could fill this in?"

Wikipedia has been vilified as a petri dish for misinformation, and the variable accuracy of its articles is a point Groom readily concedes. Since the advent of the Web, she said, the quality of sources students cite has deteriorated.

For her students, the Wikipedia experiment was "transformative," and students' writing online proved better than the average undergrad research paper.

Knowing their work was headed for the Web, not just one harried professor's eyes, helped students reach higher - as did the standards set by the volunteer "Wikipedians" who police entries for accuracy and neutral tone, Groom said.

The exercise also gave students a taste of working in the real world of peer-reviewed research.