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Kow, Y. M., Young, T., & Tekinbaş, K. S. (2014). Crafting the metagame: Connected learning in the Starcraft II community. Digital Media and Learning Research Hub.

Kow and colleagues describe a study of StarCraft II, a real-time strategy game, and the community surrounding it. They selected the game “as a research site because of its intellectual demands, academic relevance, and networked peer support driving players to strive to learn and achieve higher levels of gaming skills” (p. 5). They wanted to understand “both the design and uptake of the game within the context of connected learning” (p. 5), so they interviewed both players and members of the game-development team. They found that players and developers both brought up learning in the interviews.

They found that StarCraft II is a learning environment in which many features of connected learning are present:

    • Competition
    • Production
    • Peer-support
    • Interest-powered learning
    • Community
    • Openly-networked supports, provided both my the designers of the game and the community of players
    • Social interaction and expertise that translates across contexts (home, school, public IRL, online)
They found that “several design features of the game…. enable both the competitive and productive practices at play within the community” and that participation in the game “offers participants a chance to develop soft skills that seem highly relevant to future work environments, characterized by constant competition and nonstop learning” (p. 43).
“...at the core of learning that takes place within StarCraft II is a model in which players are connected by media content developed by players themselves, using the game editing tools or other social network tools, as well as an active and peer-supported social network.” (p. 5)
“...continuous participation within an ecosystem of technology-centered learning circles can help deepen the participants’ expertise and social skills.” (p. 43)
“Players can move at their own pace, take advantage of a diverse set of resources created by other players, and are invited to contribute their own knowledge and expertise.” (p. 44).

April 1: Fool

We listened to Lovefool We glittered and glued I have rarely been so present As I was in that past

Found myself thinking, “I want to play a map game but like a handholdy one, not Breath of the Wild, what was that AV Club article that mentioned a bunch of map games, again?” and found this in my Pocket archive and re-read it and now I’m installing Horizon Zero Dawn on the PS4.

Dissertating in the Open: Keeping a Public Research Notebook

I’m making a few notes to myself here to document my process for keeping a public research notebook. They might be of interest to you, too.

First, I’m talking here mostly about keeping up with the literature. There are (in my opinion obvious) ethical implications of actually sharing your data on your website. I’ll explore them as I write my proposal, but right now, all I’ve got is other people’s research that I’m reading and writing about, and then I’ll probably have some memos on my own process of preparing for comps and selecting my dissertation topic. Nothing wild.

So, what am I doing? Well, inspired by some writing by Kris Shaffer and Chris Aldrich, and by the fact that I gave a keynote last weekend on Connected Learning and the IndieWeb, I want to share my reading notes on some of the readings I’m doing for comps. It will help me keep track of my most important notes, and maybe it’ll be useful for other people researching similar topics. I tend to pick fairly under-researched areas, and I know it can be frustrating to have to dig up the literature on those, so this is one way I can maybe make it easier for colleagues.

Raul Pacheco-Vega is another inspiration, as he both shares reading notes and has heavily influenced my literature review workflow.

What’s the workflow?

  1. I find the source, as described through one of the various techniques in my literature review workflow, and pull it into Paperpile. If Paperpile can't find a PDF on its own, then I track a PDF down or, if it's only available physically, track down a physical copy.
  2. If it's a PDF, I read it on my Android tablet with Xodo, making highlights and annotations using my Musemee Notier stylus. If it's a physical text, I take notes on a dedicated COMPS spread in my Bullet Journal (I use a Moleskine large dotted black notebook and a Pilot G2 07).
  3. I create a new Google Doc.
  4. From Paperpile, I copy the citation and paste it into the Google Doc. I name the Google Doc Author Year Article Title. (These are all in a folder called "Synthetic Notes," nested in a folder named after the literature area.)
  5. I type up a quick synthetic note based on my highlights and annotations.
  6. I use Paperpile to find a link to the source of the original.
  7. Then, I use a bookmarklet with the WordPress Post Kinds plugin to create a new bookmark on my website. (I use the bookmark post kind instead of a read, because I'm only doing an Abstract-Introduction-Conclusion extraction, not a full read of the piece.)
  8. I paste the abstract into the Summary box in the Response Properties box.
  9. I paste the contents of my Google Doc into the WordPress editor and use the "Clear formatting" button to clean up messy GDocs code.
  10. I give the post a tag related to the literature area (e.g., connected-learning) and select the category "Research Notebook," then publish!
You may have noticed that this workflow leaves out Hypothes.is entirely. This is for a few reasons, but mostly just that right now, Hypothes.is would add several extra steps as I read on my tablet rather than on my laptop. I'd have to open up the PDF on my laptop, re-highlight and annotate using Hypothes.is tools, then use the Hypothes.is aggregator plugin to bring over those to my website. So for now, I'm doing it all manually on my site and not sharing anything there.

Bilandzic, M. (2013). Connected learning in the library as a product of hacking, making, social diversity and messiness. Interactive Learning Environments, 24(1), 158–177.

Bilandzic describes a study that “explored implications for design of interactive learning enviornments through 18 months of ethnographic observations of people’s interactions at “Hack the Evening” (HTE)… a meetup group initiated at the State Library of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia… dedicated to provide visitors with opportunities for connected learning in relation to hacking, making and do-it-yourself technology” (p. 1 in author’s copy; consult published version for final page number). The study aimed to address “how free-choice learning environments can provided connected learning opportunities, in particular through an interactive, participatory and inspiring socio-cultural context for learning?” (p. 3 in author’s copy; consult published version for final page number) and the following three related questions:

  1. What factors facilitate the connected learning experience of members within the group?
  2. How does the public library as a location for the meetup group affect the participants’ learnign experience?
  3. What are challenges and barriers for connected learning as experienced by the group, and how can libraries address those? (p. 3 in author’s copy; consult published version for final page number)
Two factors contributed to HTE’s success as a connected learning environment: uncoordinated interactions between participants and diversity in participants’ backgrounds, skills, and expertise. Designing environments that facilitate these interactions through an “open, uncoordinated and flexible meeting agenda” (p. 24 in author’s copy; consult published version for final page number) and invite diverse participants in can create space for connected learning to take place.

Bilandzic draws a distinction between events like Hack the Evening and traditional “free-choice learning  environments” such as libraries and museums “where learning is primarily supported through the physical environment” (p. 24 in author’s copy; consult published version for final page number). HTE focuses on designing a socio-cultural context where people can learn not only in a self-directed manner, but also socially and collaboratively. [Bilandzic’s emphasis on socio-cultural context is consonant with Lloyd’s and others’ work on sociocultural models of information literacy.]

Bilandzic offers four suggestions for interventions to help overcome barriers for connected learning:

  1. Increasing the awareness of social learning opportunities within a learning environment
  2. Facilitating an open, collaborative and interactive culture among users in learning environments
  3. Providing access to contempoerary learning tools and materials for “learning-by-doing” activities
  4. Supporting informal socialisation and hangouts between participants inside as well as outside the learning space premises and opening hours (p. 25 in author’s copy; consult published version for final page number).