More Press

It looks like Wired is now reporting on the paper that Constance and I recently had published in The Journal of Science Education and Technology (yay, it’s no longer “in press” and is available online) on scientific reasoning and literacy in World of Warcraft. Constance was interviewed by Clive Thompson last week, and the article popped up last night. Here’s an excerpt:

These are all hallmarks of scientific thought. Indeed, the conversations often had the precise flow of a scientific salon, or even a journal series: Someone would pose a question — like what sort of potions a high-class priest ought to carry around, or how to defeat a particular monster — and another would post a reply, offering data and facts gathered from their own observations. Others would jump into the fray, disputing the theory, refining it, offering other facts. Eventually, once everyone was convinced the theory was supported by the data, the discussion would peter out.

“It blew my mind,” Steinkuehler tells me.

And here’s the thing: The (mostly) young people engaging in these sciencelike conversations are precisely the same ones who are, more and more, tuning out of science in the classroom. Every study shows science literacy in school is plummeting, with barely one-fifth of students graduating with any sort of sense of how the scientific method works. The situation is far worse for boys than girls.

Steinkuehler thinks videogames are the way to reverse this sorry trend. She argues that schools ought to be embracing games as places to show kids the value of scientific scrutiny — the way it helps us make sense of the world.

I quibble with some of that — Thompson states it was “(mostly) young people,” but unfortunately we have no evidence to argue that point (as the forums obscure poster ages). I suspect that many of the participants actually are quite young, but would find it interesting to see if age is correlated with how one uses this particular resource. Regardless, whether or not the participants are old or young isn’t really the point, however, as I’ve discussed on Constance’s research blog in the past.

Anyway, nice to see some more, favorable press for this work. I’m currently in the stages of planning my dissertation, and am thinking of ways to develop these ideas further, especially looking at the ways that participants in the forums engage in design-like practices. The big unanswered question for this research is why are people engaging in these detailed arguments online? Is it simply for the instrumental goal of playing better? Or do some WoW players have even larger goals than that?