In Spring, 2010, I’ll be offering a course at Miami titled “Games and Learning” (IMS 390.S). Here’s a copy of the flyer for the course, and I’ll soon update this page with more information on the course as I pin down the details.

For now, here’s a brief description:

In this new, three-credit course, we’ll be looking at digital video games — from World of Warcraft to The Sims to Rock Band — and investigating what they can tell us about understanding learning, both inside and outside of schools. Do games embed valuable learning experiences? How can we best understand the role that games and “new media” should play in educational systems? What can gaming and gaming culture tell us about how people learn?

We will assess a number of commercial games, independent games, and gaming communities for what they can tell us about educational practice, learning outside the classroom, and the changing nature of literacy. Incorporating theories from the Learning Sciences, New Literacy Studies, and recent Educational Technology literatures, we will investigate games both as a means to teach and as tools for the critical task of helping us redesign education to suit the needs of the 21st century.

Studying games and learning means engaging both with some meaningful educational literatures and also introspecting on our own gameplay. So, we’ll be working through some serious and important aspects of learning theory, trying to delve into what games tell us about how people learn and how we might want to consider revising education accordingly.

Note that the flyer mentions a few specific games, but for sake of space I couldn’t mention the many others that we’ll likely talk about at some point in the term, ranging in age from the 1970s (Colossal Cave, the earliest text adventure game, and Breakout for the Atari 2600), through many contemporary and storied game franchises such as Civilization, The Legend of Zelda, and even Grand Theft Auto. If you’re unfamiliar with any or all of these games, do not worry — the course in no way requires that you know anything about games, just that you have a desire to learn and try new things. The flip side of this is also true; you could be the best Team Fortress 2 spy the world’s ever seen or have memorized every screen in Ikaruga, and it won’t matter one whit for this class. Successful students will need move from being players and fans into becoming students of understanding learning, literacy, and education with “new media.”

Students in the course should, generally, be of Junior standing, though that’s not a requirement. I’m mainly looking for students who have both of these attributes:

• Think games are something we need to assess, critique, and think seriously about
• Think education is something we need to assess, critique, and think seriously about.

That is, if you’re looking for a course that will just let you talk about games without doing real intellectual work, you ain’t gonna find it in this class. If you’re so uncomfortable with games that you won’t want to play or engage with them at all, you will find this course very difficult. I especially encourage students from AIMS and the School of Education, Health, and Society (EHS) to enroll in the class — much of the content will be very relevant to students enrolled in the AIMS Games Studies minor, or to students in many EHS programs.

This course will require a fair amount of reading, game playing, and the completion of a semester-long course project. It will be hard work for both myself and students, but hopefully it’ll be fun and worth it! Feel free to poke around the rest of my site and shoot me an email if you have any questions.