Games, learning and literacy

Abstract

Historically, media literacy efforts have been couched in terms of helping a younger generation of students learn to see media messages emanating from corporate-produced media that are designed to produce hegemonic discourse. Today's emerging media environment - particularly video games - are built on a logic of participation that operates quite differently than in the past. To be literate in today's media environment means to produce knowledge as represented through multiple media forms, and, critically, to understand the modes for producing and distributing that media via various private and public media channels. Videogames are a primary venue where such issues are being worked out; often through online outlets. In short, if yesterday's media landscape was one of broadcast, today's is one of interaction, and those people who learn to leverage technologies, social structures, and design grammars to produce and communicate messages will be those who profit.This session focuses on recent research in media literacy funded by the Spencer and MacArthur Foundations showing how participating in gaming is fundamentally engaging in the practice of Design writ large.Participants engage not just in the design of software, but too in the design of social networks and institutions. The panel begins with Robison's analysis of her in-depth interviews with a range of practicing game designers who demonstrate how games are often purposely constructed as spaces for players to become /designers /of their own experiences. Hunicke's draws on her research in the context of designing titles for Maxis, discussing issues in creating supports that enable player creativity, adding to the discussion notions of a productive gaming literacy coming from industry. Steinkuehler's naturalistic studies of gamers, showing how entertainment today means to design collective experiences via sociotechnical networks. Steinkuehler draws on cognitive science research techniques to demonstrate how MMO players are engaging in literacy and technology practices that match, if not exceed today's standards. Squire demonstrates how educators can create similar game-based learning programs that use learners' interest in games like Civilization III to develop expertise and gaming, and skills in media production.This approach argues that new approaches to media literacy need to develop a design inclination toward the production of media materials. By design, we mean more than just simply the production of materials; rather, we mean critical reflection on the parts of players, students, and media participants in identifying and understanding needs in their social worlds, the production of materials that meet those needs, and critical feedback from interested parties and constituents. We believe that this last component---students receiving feedback on the projects that they create by and from constituencies that they value and are in a position to judge the quality of their works is a key way that new media literacy initiatives can avoid the trappings of liberal pedagogies.