Thoughts on "Should the Pedagogy Match the Technology: Interactivity and Critical Pedagogy" - HASTAC 2010

Last week's conference was a hotbed of innovation, full of multimodal presentations and new ways of thinking about everything from media to the conference itself. One panel discussion that particularly intrigued me was "Should the Pedagogy Match the Technology: Interactivity and Critical Pedagogy," presented by University of Oregon staff and faculty.

The discussion centered on two technologies, blogs and video games, and considerations regarding deploying them in the college classroom. The blog half of the discussion was a lot of material that many of us are familiar with, although it's interesting to note that one professor had high praise for Ning because it is easy to work with and it's free -- and the next day, Ning announced that they would be phasing out the free service. That's a shame, but it's a topic for another day.

I was more interested in the video-game discussion, especially because it left me with a lot of questions. One of the presenters, librarian Annie Zeidman-Karpinski, talked about using games as a metaphor in pedagogy. Specifically, certain types of games, like Tetris, fulfill certain needs, like solving puzzles or problems. She pointed out that games are doing a better job at filling these needs than pedagogy is, and that we might use that lesson to inform new directions for teaching. As an example, she mentioned an upcoming course in which students will be challenged to redesign the library website based on "video-game principles," but these were not spelled out. While I can get this in a general way, I was hoping for more specifics on how this transformation can take place, or advice for teachers who want to make use of this idea. I think time restrictions played a part, but such specifics were not forthcoming. What experiences of this sort exist out there in our research community? I'd love to hear more.

Allison Carruth mentioned a course she will be teaching that will incorporate one or more eco-inspired games (like WolfQuest, which "challenges players to learn about wolf ecology by living the life of a wild wolf in Yellowstone National Park"); they are useful to her because they allow students to "learn experientially." Learning by doing is a major hallmark of pedagogy in general, and it is powerfully served by simulation games and similar genres. Carol Stabile later started tp build on this idea by bringing up the difference between teaching classes on (or about) games and teaching classes in games--that is, within game worlds, the panel's example being World of Warcraft. Making the latter work, though, turns out to be problematic, as the panelists talked about issues of access to hardware, how to incorporate game time into the classroom, the problems with some games' steep learning curves, and the fact that "it's hard to teach and play at the same time." I know that enthusiasm for this use of games is in the air; what examples, successful or not, are out there for us to learn from?