Book Review of "Postsecondary Play: The Role of Games and Social Media in Higher Education"

Abstract

Tierney, W. G., Corwin, Z. B., Fullerton, T., & Ragusa, G. (Eds.). (2014). Postsecondary play: The role of games and social media in higher education. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Pages: 336. Price: $44.95 USD (hardcover) ISBN 13:978-1-4214-1306-8. Electronic ISBN 13:9781-4214-1307-5.More than a half century ago, Benjamin Bloom and his associates framed objectives within three taxonomies - cognitive, affective and psychomotor - ranking the cognitive domain in a hierarchical sequence starting with recall of knowledge and moving up to evaluation of this knowledge. However, these categories did contemplate or accommodate change - the ability to adapt to change, to learn how to learn, and to integrate across disciplines and skill sets. Significant is relational and interactive, and should generate excitement about the value of the subject for the student and others in society (Fink, 2013).How, then, do the impersonal features and distancing effects of social media and technology-based games create hunger for by higher education students, most of whom are digital natives, born after 1980, their lives mediated by technology? How do social media and related games lead to effective enthusiasm for teaching that meshes with student interests and motivates students to learn? How does the students' world of what is real for them mesh with that of digital immigrants, a large number of their professors and administrators born before 1980, their lives interrupted by technology?Zoe Corwin, research director for the Pullias Center for Higher Education at the University of Southern California (USC), argues that the gap is real (witness the miscommunication when traditional vs. social media styles, formality and content of writing clash). But it can be bridged. In her chapter titled From Communication to Community: How Games and Social Media Affect Postsecondary Stakeholders, Corwin emphasizes that the way different stakeholder groups such as students and teachers experience games and social media is intertwined. She challenges those of us in the academy to reconceptualize the meaning of postsecondary learning (Tierney, Corwin, Fullerton, & Ragusa, 2014, p. 105).Corwin is one of 19 contributors to this compilation of 12 essays by U.S.-based educational researchers, game theorists and assessment experts on the role of games and social media, addressing current and future challenges of student entry into and engagement within higher education. More specifically, the timely and troubling topics focus on how games and social media are transforming society and higher education swiftly and significantly; inspiring teaching technique innovation; reformulating the experience; embracing cross-generational participation; encouraging crowd-sourced interaction and feedback through open sources; decentralizing knowledge; and complicating communication channels to a degree and in ways envisioned even five years ago.This book grew from a four-year interdisciplinary collaboration in the United States to create new no-tech, low-tech and high-tech games to prepare high school students for and to improve their access to higher education, and the perceived disconnect between educators and gamers to achieve these socially motivated goals. The initiative complemented the work of guidance counselors and aimed to fill a gap in the literature on games and social media, and, in particular, game and new media literary theories in higher education.Insights anchored in observation and reflection in this book serve to help school administrators, instructors and related practitioners engage students more effectively, from enrolment to completion, through modified curriculum, delivery and assessment. However, Tracy Fullerton, Electronic Arts Endowed Chair in Interactive Entertainment at the USC, warns that games and social media are not a magic bullet (Tierney et al. …