massive learning, massive play: constructing identity and community through text and interface

Massive Learning, Massive Play: Constructing Identity and Community through Text and Interface

Adam Heidebrink-Bruno (@adamheid) Sean Michael Morris (@slamteacher)

Jesse Stommel (@Jessifer)

Photo by wvs

The interface of any given system is calibrated to favor particular user-engagements.

Photo by Zsolt Halasi

Argument By Design:How MOOC Platforms and MMOG Interfaces Inform Digital Pedagogies

Adam Heidebrink-Bruno @adamheid

The interface plays a key role in defining our relationship both with the system and how we identify ourselves within the system.

Photo by ap

In any given digital environment, users are required to act according to its laws. The interface, then, enforces those laws.

EdX: Discussion Forums

Coursera: Discussion Forums

Canvas: Discussion Forums

Narrative Play in World of Warcraft !

Sean Michael Morris (@slamteacher)

Photo by visualpanic

Even though my body doesn’t even change positions, even though I’m still staring at the same screen, World of Warcraft represents a whole different internet for me.

World of Warcraft is a deeply involving social experience, and one that motivates learners to return again and again to the interface. But it is also a learning environment.

Photo by Celeste

The Twitter-verse as Virtual World: Selves and Landscapes in the Textual Interface

!Jesse Stommel (@jessifer)

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Follow Alongbit.ly/twitterworld

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In MMOGs 3D graphics-rendered avatars construct the player behind the screen, collaborating with others through shared quests and group responsibilities. In Twitter, identity emerges through dialogue, a networked concoction of text, videos, and graphics. Yet, in today’s MOOCs, identity is almost nonexistent, hidden under layers of hypertexts and tucked deep in forums, or worse, as an enrollment number.

Learning is a social experience, and it can and does happen within each of the communities listed above. The impact of that learning, however, is largely determined by the user’s ability to identify as a participant within the given interface. Without that critical moment of self-realization, the user will remain anonymous and the engagement will become just another blind interaction and no more self-aware than a simple algorithm.

Photo by Stéfan

Thank You!

Photo by flickr user Dirigentens