The popularity of MMORPGs is a testament to how successful the starter
city model of graduated learning within a context of meaningful action
has been in helping players learn to function within an unfamiliar environment.
Game developers are understandably cagey about releasing precise subscription
figures, but Ultima Online’s unprecedented (at the time) base
of 14,000 simultaneous players at launch now represents the low end of
a MMORPG developer’s launch target. Star Wars Galaxies launched
with a subscriber base in excess of 200,000; perhaps the most complex
and challenging MMORPG of them all, EVE Online expects to reach
a subscriber target of 250,000 later this year; none of these games even
comes close to World of Warcraft’s claim of a subscriber base
of ten million. Nor can the learning that takes place be attributed to
a familiarity derived from playing similar games. Certainly players of
Ultima Online would have found much that was similar when they
moved on to play games such as Everquest, Asheron’s Call
and Guild Wars; gameplay styles had broad similarities and conceptual
frameworks developed in one—leveling, character classes, skill and
ability development, questing, grinding—would have applied generally
to the others. This level of transfer would have persisted through more
recent games such as Lord of the Rings Online and World of Warcraft.
But this broad similarity is best understood as a certain consistency
in topic and approach, the kind of consistency that a student would experience
when they made the transition from a high school English class to a College
English class and discovered to their relief (or chagrin) that the latter
still required you to read books and (usually) write about them, and that
such courses were usually arranged in the form of introductory courses
leading to more specific courses focusing on period, author or genre.
Such commonalities are merely the foundation for considerable variation
and such variation can present a complex learning challenge.
James Paul Gee's work provides, as I have suggested, a useful way of beginning to think through the kind of learning strategies that MMORPGs make use of in order to help their players learn to play and love a very complex game [1]. The limiting factor in Gee's work, however, is that while he gives us all kinds of reasons why we should be interested in electronic games as model environments for effective situated learning, he doesn't give us a great deal of guidance for how we might apply those lessons to our everyday educational domains. In particular, there are two issues that present some noticeable difficulties if we are to attempt to apply his analysis of the applicability of videogames' learning models to the teaching of writing:
- Motivation: A large part of the reason for the success of games (and by success I mean not simply their popularity) is that players have chosen to play that particular game. They bring to the game a positive investment of energy, a (not unlimited by any means!) willingness to afford the game some leeway to challenge and even frustrate them, and a set of goals that are tied directly to that game (to be able to play with their friends, to learn more about history, to have a form of relaxation late at night, etc.). None of these things can be guaranteed to be true in the realm of college education as a whole, and when it comes to the domain of writing instruction, very often none of them are true. In effect, the writing class often puts students in the position of (at best) playing dutifully through a game because it may help them become a game designer or, at worst slogging through a game because they hope to become a chef one day.
- Practice: Despite all the attention devoted to practice in Gee's analysis, its fundamental parameters remain unclear. It is clear from Gee's account that learning itself is a "practice effect" and that no meaningful development is possible unless the learner is able to engage with material within "the context of embodied actions" (pp. 67-68). From this it is clear that what he means by practice does not have much to do with at least two of the three forms of "practice" that are afforded most students at college level: writing essays, and exhibiting their skills through examination (whether it also applies to science lab classes is a more complex question). What then would embodied practice look like in an educational setting?
For Gee both these issues are ultimately interrelated: you can't get people to engage in the kind of deep and sustained practice that is necessary for real learning unless they are motivated (p. 68).
Leaving aside the question of motivation, for a moment, I want to focus on one fundamental feature of game learning: you practice a set of skills while you are actually engaged in the activity for which you are practicing. In this respect if Gee is correct that the popularity of games is in part due to the learning models they employ, that popularity may simply be the result of the fact that games therefore blend seamlessly with the kind of learning that people employ in their everyday lives. If you are a runner, you learn to run by running. A lot. You get better at competing in races by competing in other races. I've been teaching myself the basics of being a bicycle mechanic by working on bicycles. Gee would remind us that this is certainly not all that is required if learning is to be effective: we need reflection, we often need self-guided instruction (reading an instruction manual) and input from outsiders (advice from those more experienced, coaching). This is for him the key difference between active learning and critical learning. Nevertheless, all of these mean nothing without the fundamental fact that we learn by doing in a domain where our learning has real consequences. My incentive to learn to repair my bike effectively is that if I don't, pieces fall off and I crash. In this sense, we are not self-taught, but we are certainly self-learned.
This learning, however, needs to take place initially within a safe zone. I fix my bike and then I ride it around the driveway for a bit; I don't immediately hurl myself down a 3000 foot descent at 50 miles an hour. This is not to say that the learning environment is without risk or consequences. This is certainly not true of MMORPGs and it should not be true of our classrooms. This is, however, why the search for more "authentic" writing situations is ultimately doomed to failure. The really authentic writing situation would be not to have students in class at all, but instead have them out in the workforce, or helping out a nonprofit, or working on their great unfinished novel. Our goal, instead, should be to design situations that effectively simulate "authentic" writing situations. This of course requires that we dispense with the idea that simulation is a secondary, limited activity. Many simulations are, in fact, designed to be as real as possible. Furthermore, while the simulation is not itself the "authentic" situation, it is capable of producing authentic responses and modifying behavior to produce authentic learning.
My intention in this webtext is to tease out a few of the key assumptions that underpin the design of the learner environment in MMORPGs. In particular I have focused on those components of the game that designers see as absolutely critical for building the skills of a new player and cultivating and enhancing their desire to play. It is my hope that using these concepts will enable us as writing teachers and program administrators to begin to reorient the "design grammar" (to use Gee's phrase) associated with writing pedagogy. In no way am I going to make the obvious move at this point (or maybe this avoidance is the obvious move) to describe what I think an application of this design grammar to writing course and program design will produce in terms of the structure and appearance of a specific classroom. The game design principles I've illustrated here have, after all, produced a highly diverse range of games: from the niche community of the uncompromising EVE Online to the runaway popularity of World of Warcraft's familiar fantasy elements. The one thing that these games have in common however is that in harmonizing their learning environment with the games larger design vision to produce a satisfying behavioral simulation, they work very well.
Teaching Writing: Design Principles
What I can do is suggest that when we are thinking about redesigning
our classes and writing programs, we need to make some firm decisions at
the outset.
1. We need to decide which game we want students to play. The attempt to have our writing classes be all things to all people is not serving anyone very well. In practice this should mean, I think, treating first-year writing classes not as the tutorial but as the starter city. If we can teach confident that another part of our institutional MMORPG (such as the required curriculum) has already prepared students with fundamental interface knowledge (media literacy skills, study skills, etc.), then it frees up time in our classes to focus on learning tasks more salient to writing. This might even mean something as radical as the abolition of the first-year writing requirement in order to begin effective writing instruction in the second-year of college.
2. Recover the sense of active learning from the merely interactive. While I have been highly critical in this web text of the enthusiasm of writing teachers for blogs, I believe nevertheless that those writing teachers who are trying to forge links between the classroom and the larger world of texts (via new media technologies, service learning initiatives, or a combination of both) are on the right track. But if this is to be done successfully, the fact that we are building a more realistic simulation, rather than transcending our limitations to achieve a more authentic oneness with the socio-cultural universe needs to be acknowledged. An important component of such an initiative will be that we don't mistake the mere fact of interactivity for active learning.
3. Strive for critical learning. The difference between active learning and critical learning is something that many writing classes oriented toward service-learning have recognized for some time. Leaving the class and writing in the outside world doesn't necessarily help you develop as a writer any more than it does for, well, someone who spends their time writing in the outside world. Critical learning involves extensive reflection on your practice [2]. If even this is to be productive, however, it needs to be reflection with the goal of producing adaptation and transference: what did I learn here that is generally applicable? What did I learn that is only applicable in particular situations? What mistakes did I make and how can I try not to make those same mistakes again? Oh, and speaking of practice. . .
4. Build in lots of occasions for practice. MMORPGs give players lots and lots of practice (sometimes too much!) in order to help them solidify and refine the core game skills. In my own classes, such improvement as I often note in students' writing skills is not something for which I can really take credit. It is largely the product of the fact that they are being required, perhaps for the only time in their educational career up to that point (and maybe afterward) to attend closely to their writing, and to produce lots of it. One quarter or semester, or even two of each, is not, however, sufficient practice.
5. Introduce students to the design grammar of writing situations. In general I think it would be beneficial for writing teachers to begin to think of themselves not as writers and/or teachers, but to talk about both those domains in terms of design. Certainly this could only help with the creation of our courses. While it is common to talk about our "course designs" in my experience it is more often the case that our courses are assembled rather than designed [3]. And they are assembled more commonly than not under the aegis of either expression or representation: this is what I want my course to say, this is what I want students to see or get from it. Treating our courses as simulations, on the other hand, shifts our focus: this is what I want my students to do. But talking about writing in general as design has a couple of very important pedagogical advantages: design is the language of assessing needs, reflecting, shaping, tailoring. . . In other words, it establishes writing as a domain where students a) can make a difference, and b) can exert a measure of control. It is thus a far cry from the view that many students have of writing as a domain of talent, or an unchecked river of language that flows out of them and whose course can't be controlled. I think this is why I have had some modest success in using game design as the focus for an introductory writing class. It is easy to see design in operation in games, and that in turn helps to provide the grammar to see writing as a form of design.
Lave and Wenger's (1991) argument that we need to treat students as "legitimate peripheral participants" in order to move them "toward full participation in the sociocultural practices of a community" (p. 29) seems to resonate with what I have been saying here. Unsurprisingly, Gee finds that the theories of cognition they employ are a good fit with his own argument (p. 189). Indeed, their conception of situated learning as a practice that takes into account the whole individual and their immersion in a world of activities is one that comes very close to the central ideas embodied in the kind of learning theories remediated in MMORPGs [4].
However there is a significant issue with their work that gives me pause and suggests, if I am to be honest, a major obstacle in using these kinds of games as models for writing classes. When people play an MMORPG they do not do so on the condition that they will be a "legitimate peripheral participant." Rather, they expect to be a "legitimate central participant"—and to be playing that role pretty much from the get-go (hence many of the characteristics of the starter city or the starter zone). Lave and Wenger's theory is grounded, as they note, in an original desire to rehabilitate the concept of apprenticeship and their goal is still to move the student toward mastery in their specific skill community. Of course, in the world of MMORPGs there is no shortage of "power gamers" who are obsessed with mastery. But for the majority of the player base the driving imperative is not mastery but to feel that one's participation in the game is significant and consequential. Given that the university is modeled on progress toward a putative mastery, replicating a learning model where mastery is not the goal may be a challenge. Perhaps more significantly, however, is the fact that these games are but one example of similar media practices that are shaping our students expectations concerning their learning experience. Many of the best students I have taught in recent years have struck me as being as intensely driven as those I have taught in the past. . .but driven in a different way. They don't seem particularly concerned with being the best they can be, but rather "good enough." By which they do not mean what we tend to think of someone who has eschewed mastery—that they have settled for mediocrity—but rather that they are "good enough" to live a full life fully.
6. Help students become designers. This, for Gee, is the critical step in translating active learning into critical learning:
For active learning, the learner must, at least unconsciously, understand and operate within the internal and external design grammars of the semiotic domain he or she is learning. But for critical learning, the learner must be able consciously to attend to, reflect on, critique, and manipulate those design grammars at a metalevel. That is, the learner must see and appreciate the semiotic domain as a design space, internally as a system of interrelated elements making up the possible content of the domain and externally as ways of thinking, acting, interacting, and valuing that constitute the identities of those people who are members of the affinity group associated with the domain. (p. 40)
This is an extension of 5 above, but it helps to clarify our goal. The student should begin to see themselves as a designer of writing. [reference legitimate peripheral]
Teaching Writing: Design Challenges
1. Pulled in different directions. As I have argued, part of the confusion
that hampers the effectiveness of the first-year classroom as a starter
city is that it is being asked to orient students to two very different
kinds of tasks. Writing for academic success and writing for life success.
There was a long period of time when I believed that the two were not
incompatible. Now, however, I find myself siding with those who argue
that the idea of a general "academic writing" is not only unworkably
vague but bears little resemblance to how people actually get things done
with words out in the world. The more important point is that writing
programs should commit to one set of objectives or another. If the most
important goal is to help students write discipline-specific essays, the
program should be organized with that goal in mind. If the institution
believes it is important to have students write well for a general audience,
then all resources should be directed to that end. Writing programs are
faced with chronic scarcity of both resources and time and therefore need
to make choices about where their true focus lies. As writing teachers
we may well want to embrace all kinds of writing. But game designers have
learned a valuable lesson from which we ourselves could learn: the game
that tries to be all things to all people inevitably fails. Often spectacularly.
Almost always expensively. [5].
2. The need for a writing program. Much of what I have suggested here is predicated on the need for a writing program. And that means an actual program. Not one or two courses. Undoubtedly a program that offers only one or two courses in freshman comp can learn some valuable lessons from MMORPG learning strategies in terms of how to design those courses most effectively. But they will not be able to function as starter cities in the fullest sense unless they are able to provide higher level writing-specific learning environments for students.
3. What's my motivation? The fact that writing courses are generally required courses seems to present an almost insurmountable point of difference between our classrooms and the world of MMORPGs. In fact, it does not have as big an impact as one might suppose. In the first place, while players of MMORPGs can in one sense be said to have chosen to play, and while US culture fetishizes the notion of freedom of choice, it is probably true that our real choices are a lot more constrained than we ever realize. More to the point, however, the fact that students are compelled to take our writing courses is a persistent problem if we operate within a framework of authenticity. It is not at all a problem if we operate within a simulation framework. The success of simulations in a training environment is an object lesson here. Airline pilots, for example, are usually required to put in a certain number of simulator hours per year. This doesn't prevent the simulation from training them effectively. As Gee argues:
That is what is magical about learning in good video games—and in good classrooms, too—learners are not always overtly aware of the that that [sic] are “learning,” how much they are learning, or how difficult it is. Learners are embedded in a domain (a semiotic domain like a branch of science or a good video game) where, even when they are learning (and since the domain gets progressively harder, they are always learning), they are still in the domain, still a member of the team (affinity group), still actually playing the game, even if only as a “newbie.” (p. 123)
This simply means that we need to rise to the challenge and create a better, more immersive writing simulation, one in which students learn actively, critically, and part of which they will carry with them as the framework for the next massively multiplayer life game they encounter.
My argument for the importance of simulation to the writing classroom is, finally, based on a simple but powerful premise: simulations are inherently vehicles for hope. “It is common to contrast narrative and drama because the former is the form of the past, of what cannot be changed, while the latter unfolds in present time. To take the analogy further, simulation is the form of the future. It does not deal with what happened or is happening, but with what may happen. Unlike narrative and drama, its essence lays on a basic assumption: change is possible” (Frasca, 2003, p. 233) [6].
1. Gee, J. P. (2003) What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Gee can be found wandering in the wilds of Pedagogia.
2. Some may note that I have not said anything about a reflective, analytical capability associated with games. Electronic games in general are in fact popularly considered the antithesis of reflective behavior. If we look only at the actual game-playing experience, however, we will miss the fact that most of the external apparatus of fan sites, player organized guilds and societies, advice sites and so on are set up to provide just this level of critical reflection and analysis. Players craft stories that reflect on the development of their character, provide combat reports to analyze which strategies worked and did not work, and so on.
3. If we understand that "playing" an MMORPG is about more than simply the time spent in-game, then we will notice that this concept of understanding the design grammar is a fundamental part of the experience. Players debate the latest game enhancements, decry existing bugs, etc., as design elements, not simply as features of the world.
4. Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. London: Cambridge UP.
5. Doug Brent (2005) makes an eloquent case for the benefits of coupling first-year composition classes with the traditional freshman seminar. I agree with his argument that such courses can be extremely effective in introducing students to the research culture of the university, and that they can be much more effective than most of the introductory gateway courses to a specific discipline where the focus on writing and research becomes secondary to content coverage (p. 261). Nevertheless, Brent's course remains a solution to a problem that has little to do specifically with writing: the problem of retaining students in institutions where there is little interest in seeing them as active partners in the making of new knowledge. These courses, Brent notes, are designed “to counter the typical first-year student’s experience of sitting in a large lecture hall taking notes on the results of research rather than engaging with the process of doing research” (p. 255). Is this a real problem at many universities? Absolutely. Writing programs, however, can not afford (in several senses) to get involved with being the solution for a "crisis" whose causes are more general. My experience as a WPA has taught me that doing so simply gives people another stick with which to beat your program should you fail. Or even if you succeed for that matter! See Brent, D. (2005). Reinventing WAC (again): The first-year seminar and academic literacy. College Composition and Communication 57 (2). 253-276.
6. Frasca, G. (2003). Simulation vs. narrative: Introduction to ludology. In M. J. P. Wolf and B. Perron (Eds.), The video game theory reader (pp. 221-235). New York: Routledge.
Pack Up and Move to a New City