Marcus Leaning

A study of the use of games and gamification to enhance student engagement, experience and achievement on a theory-based course of an undergraduate media degree

This article details the research findings of a study investigating the effectiveness of a learning and teaching project that involved the use of games to aid in student learning on a media theory module taught on a undergraduate Media Studies degree in a British university. Critical and social theory often presents a significant problem for students (Campbell, 1997) and this is no different for media students (Buckingham, 2003). A learning and teaching project was carried out in which a range of game activities were used to teach media theory. Research was then conducted to explore the effectiveness of the game techniques. The article is divided into four parts: section one provides a brief discussion of the problems of teaching theory, how it has been taught and an overview of the learning and teaching project. Section two examines the idea of gamification and its use in education and how games and gamification were used to teach on the module and section three describes the research methods used to evaluate the learning and teaching project. In section four the results of the research are noted and discussed.

The Importance of Partnerships: The Relationship between Small Businesses, ICT and Local Communities

The deployment of new technologies such as the Internet is often understood to positively change the way that business works. However it is important to realise that success is not automatic and a number of other factors must also be considered. In this paper it is argued that a wider range of skills is needed than just technical skills, and a wider vision is needed than just the vision of one business. Small businesses, widely considered a suitable vehicle for sustainable development, must be seen in the context of their communities, for their relationship with public sector agencies and other supporting and regulatory bodies, and as partners to much larger businesses. This paper is based on small-scale qualitative fieldwork conducted with small businesses that make extensive use of ICT located in Cape Town, South Africa and Swansea in South Wales, a deprived region of the UK. It was found that for businesses to succeed a range of competencies are by business managers needed that facilitate relationships and partnerships, these are in addition to the skills needed for simple internal operational issues. Moreover as the nature of partnerships change the mix of required competencies vary from one circumstance to another. A model is presented that shows some of the critical relationships between the Internet (on the one hand) and the stakeholders of a business and the relationships with them (on the other).

The Person We Meet Online

Introduction A great deal has been written about identity and the synchronous interpersonal communication that takes place using the internet and associated technologies.’ Numerous claims have been made about the textual nature of various forms of internet communication offering an alternative space in which we can interact in a striped down or a ’cues reduced’ form.’ Authors such as Sherry Turkle envisage the ’new space’ of the communication systems on the internet as a ’social laboratory for experimenting with the construction and reconstruction of the self that characterises post-modern life’.3 The essential core of such claims, though with many nuances, is that this form of computer-mediated communication permits a form of communication between individuals who need only declare such details about themselves as they see fit. The result of which is that interlocutors are often envisaged as inventing ’fantastic’ identities for themselves. The plethora of research papers written on such virtual identities or personae in synchronous computer mediated communication has been succinctly, if rather cynically, summed up by David Gauntlett: ’cyberspace ... you can play with identity... nobody knows who you really are ... gosh ...’

Mumsnet Zombies: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse on Mumsnet and YouTube

This chapter explores the manner in which zombies can be examined as a device through which we may consider social anxieties. The chapter concludes by asserting that zombies have been used as a device through which we can understand and deal with contemporary social problems and other forms of ‘risk’. I argue they are a tool that is used to engage with risk and to ameliorate the psychological impact of the possibility of calamitous disasters.

Educating the postmodern child: the struggle for learning in a world of virtual realities. By Fiachra Long

Probably, as in the ‘chicken or egg’ dilemma, democracy is a requirement for democratic education, and democratic education is awkwardly practised without a democratic culture and democratic policies. However, Harber and Mncube usefully argue that this problem can still be resolved, although whether or not this is possible depends on the everyday choices made by teachers, teachers’ educators and inspectors.

Playing with the Future: Development and Directions in Computer Gaming, 5-7 April 2002

are worthy of study, that there are innumerable statistics that can be cited to support funding bids or convince Heads of Departments that games should be studied and taught,’ the actual approach to such study is far from agreed. Further, as Aarseth2 indicates, the study of computer games is a field ripe for theoretical colonisation. Accordingly the conferences tend to be rather nebulous in nature. Numerous

David Hakken, Cyborgs@Cyberspace? An Ethnographer looks to the Future, (London, Routledge: 1999), 264pp. ISBN 0 415 91558 9; and David Bell and Barbara M. Kennedy (eds), The Cybercultures Reader (London: Routledge, 2000), 768pp. ISBN 0 415 18379 0

through to the more empirical Mitra’s ’Virtual communality: Looking for India on the Internet’. Section nine approaches the subject of colonialism and globalisation through cyber-culture. Topics such as the Saidian Orient, Westernism, race and the nation state are examined. Here the ideas broached at the start as to whether cyber-culture is a technologically enabled culture, in some way autonomous from mainstream culture or whether it is an aspect of mainstream culture are given further airing. Nakamura’s paper on racial identity tourism ’Race in/for Cyberspace’ sits well with Stratton’s account of the globalising aspects of cyberspace, ’Cyberspace and the Globalization of Culture’ and Sardar’s ’ALT.CIVILIZATIONS.FAQ’ presents an account of the dystopian prospect of cyberspace. As with any collection of readings all the works have been previously available in some format and some in several. The skill in this volume, however, can be seen in the grouping of the readings and the intelligent and insightful introductions that preface each section. It is these overviews and the groupings of the works that add value to the highly useful collection of the papers into one volume. The groupings provide an anchor or framework for analysis above and beyond specific subject approaches. However, this framework did seem to suffer from some notable absences, particularly both Mark Poster and Kathleen Hales are absent. Such post-structural (or post-human) positions would certainly have benefited the ’Post-(cyber)bodies’ section. This aside the volume’s structure provides an excellent approach to the diverse nature of the fields of study; who knows, perhaps in such a collection of papers from different disciplines a new coherence of approach can be found. Notes 1 T.W. Luke, ’Liberal Society and Cyborg Subjectivity: The Politics of Environments, Bodies, and Nature’, Alternatives, 21 (1996), p. 6. 2 Donna Harraway, ’A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century’, Simions, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, D. Harraway (London: Free Association, 1991).

Jim Walch, In the Net : A Guide for Activists (London & New York: Zed Books 1999) 188pp. ISBN 1 85649 699 6 (PBK

and communication technology (ICT) has been previously used by ’progressive’ political groups. Interwoven into this account of political activism on the internet is a treatise on the use of the internet as a way of supporting or building a Habermassian public sphere and ways in which the dominance of Northern or established political views can be challenged. Use of the ICT can be seen as a political act in itself, here Walch is dealing with the politics of the internet created by those carrying out politics on the internet.