Distributed Teaching and Learning Systems

• In Event: Virtual Worlds and Video Games: Synergies in Research

Abstract

Purpose. Our goal in this paper is to describe the nature of distributed systems of teaching and learning that transcend dichotomies of online and offline activities or spaces.

Perspectives. Video games and virtual worlds have frequently been studied as learning environments in isolation; that is, scholars have focused on understanding the features of games or virtual worlds as separate from or different than “real world” environments for learning. While more recently, scholars have explored the teaching and learning that takes place around games and virtual worlds, for example in affinity spaces (i.e., Gee & Hayes, 2010; Hayes & Duncan, 2010), these too have been treated as separate and often divorced from other learning experiences. We draw on contemporary theories of human thought and learning (e.g., Clark, 2008; Dawson, 2014; Gee, 2015; Reeves & Nass, 1999; Richardson & Chemero, 2014) to argue that real and virtual experiences are mediated in similar ways by social worlds, tools, and social interactions.

Methods & Evidence. We apply key concepts from the literature on embodied and situated cognition to analyses of player experience, social interactions, online affinity spaces, and tools associated with two popular video games, Portal 2 and DOTA2, and with Twine, a platform used to create games and interactive fiction. We use three case studies to examine how player experiences with games and related platforms are located and interpreted within broader, dynamic systems of social relations, technologies, practices, teaching and learning.

Results/Point of View. Our analyses suggest that video games and virtual worlds offer opportunities for new types of “conversations” with the world that extend humans’ abilities to learn from experiences. How people experience games and virtual worlds - the meanings they draw from these experiences, the kinds of learning opportunities afforded by these experiences, and how these experiences extend that learning beyond the game - are highly dependent on how people engage with a larger, interconnected social and technical system of other people and resources. While engagement in such systems might appear to be open and available to all, our analyses indicate that there are significant social and cultural, as well as technical barriers for some potential participants. For example, in the past, online affinity spaces were often used by scholars as examples of accessible hubs for collective knowledge-building. However, the increasingly dispersed and distributed nature of online interactions around games and virtual worlds, in particular the use of social media such as Twitter and Reddit, as well as sites such as YouTube, can make it challenging for newcomers to join these larger conversations.

Significance. Understanding our experiences with video games and virtual worlds as distinctive forms of conversations with the world, situated within distributed teaching and learning systems, offers a new means of understanding their potential significance in people’s lives and learning.

Authors

• Elisabeth R. Gee, Arizona State University

• James Paul Gee, Arizona State University