Games for Education and Social Change

Mary Flanagan, a professor of film and media studies at Dartmouth College, believes that video games can be used in the classroom. At present, Flanagan is involved with the Games for Learning Institute to examine ways to effectively use video games to teach math and science to middle school children. If that isn't enough, she is also the director and founder of a research group at Dartmouth that designs social activist games - Tiltfactor.

While there are substantial barriers to the adoption of games for educational purposes - the steep learning curve being a big one - Flanagan contends that there are benefits to the students. She notes that games enable players to make decisions, engage in exploration activities, and experiment with novel approaches to problem-solving in a "safe" environment. The work Flanagan does is also attempting to capitalize on what young people do when using technology - searching and socializing. Overall, Flanagan and the Games for Learning Institute hope to better understand what makes video games engaging and what aspects of them players like.

Female Online Students

According to a summary of a report presented in The Chronicle of Higher Education, female students rate conformity as one of their key motivators. However, what conformity means is unclear in the CHE piece, and a link to the full report was not provided. So, what was discussed in this piece?

Here's what we know: Brett Jorge Millan, interim director for distance education at South Texas College, collected data from 157 online students and 486 face-to-face students at that institution. He used the Schwartz Value Scale to measure 10 motivational types (self-direction, stimulation, hedonism, achievement, power, security, conformity, tradition, benevolence, and universalism). And, in addition to the conformity finding, Millan's data suggest two things: 1) the values of online students and those in face-to-face courses tend to be similar; and 2) online students are typically older than their f2f counterparts.

While these results are potentially worthwhile, there are a number of missing pieces. Hopefully, the report will be made available in the near future.

Update: Schwartz defines conformity in the following manner: “Conformity values restraint of actions, inclinations, and impulses likely to upset or harm others and violate social expectations or norms” (Schwartz & Boehnke, 2004, p. 235). It also values politeness, obedience, and subordination to parents, teachers, bosses, etc.

Sounds like very female-like behavioral characteristics - ones that are not uncommon in online spaces.

Volunteer Teachers

A new university is scheduled to begin offering courses in February. While an announcement of this type may not seem terribly newsworthy on the surface, one thing sets this university apart from many others: the faculty members will be volunteers. Founders of P2P (peer-to-peer) University, including Joel Thierstein (executive director of Connexions at Rice University), believe that the time is right for the initiative, and point to current successful models such as Wikipedia and the MIT OpenCourseWare project. Working professionals and retirees are the target market for the P2P University courses. These individuals will not received credit for the courses they take through this institution; rather the hope is that credit will be obtain via other institutions such as Western Governors University.

The big question is: Who are these volunteers who will teach the courses? At present, the founders have 10 professors who are prominent in their respective fields (no names are being released yet). Those at P2P hope to continue along this trajectory and attract more celebrity professors to the program. Even with star profs participating in this "design research experiment," a major concern is student retention.

The Networked Family

Is technology bringing families closer together? Tracy Kennedy and her colleagues say "Yes." According to research conducted by Kennedy et al. (2008, October 19) for the Pew Internet and American Life project, today's family households have multiple technologies, and use these devices to stay in touch. This includes what Lee Rainie, director of the Pew project, calls "love taps." However, this form of connectedness does not always translate into face-to-face time. For example, the findings of this study suggest that busy, tech families are less likely to eat meals together and are not as likely to report satisfaction with their leisure time when compared to their less tech-connected counterparts.

Late Bloomers

What do the painter Paul Cézanne and the writer (and former lawyer) Ben Fountain have in common? They were both late bloomers. They did not "discover" their artistic and creative talents until later in life. In the "Annals of Culture" section of The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell discusses the concept of creative genius, and argues that it is not a characteristic that is unique to the young. This is not to say that there aren't prodigies; there are. In fact, Gladwell uses Pablo Picasso and Jonathan Safran Foer as examples of individuals who discovered their talents early in their careers. Success comes easily for these prodigies. For the late bloomers, however, their success greatly depends on the other people - a spouse, a patron, a friend - someone who believes in the late bloomer's art. As Gladwell concludes, the story of the late bloomer is really just a love story.

Texting and David Crystal

The October 20, 2008 issue of The New Yorker includes a review of David Crystal's new book, Txtng: The Gr8 Db8. Responses to Louis Menand's review can be found here, here, and here.

Opening Up Education

MIT's M. S. Vijay Kumar, the editor of Opening Up Education: The Collective Advancement of Education through Open Technology, Open Content, and Open Knowledge, was yesterday's guest on EDUCAUSE Live! For those like me who were not able to connect to this free talk, the event was archived. Multimedia, HTML (session details and the book), and PowerPoint slides from the session are available.