18 November 9.00am (Australian Eastern Summer time) Crystle Martin talked about cognition and learning in MMOs and the constellation of information that surround them, focusing on topics of literacy including information literacy. She is the lead project assistant for the PopCosmo research group led by Constance Steinkuehler and a member of Games+Learning+Society.


There seemed to be a higher number of connectivity issues for a couple of participants today (just to explain some of the comments).

Franticread: great to see you all here today, before we hear from Crystle it would be great for everyone here to introduce themselves - just as much information as you feel comfortable with. My name is Ellen Forsyth and I work at the State Library of NSW - perhaps we could go in clockwise way around library?

Scholarly: I'm Chris Hennick, I'm graduating with a Computer Science BSc next month. I want to go into artificial intelligence, hence my interest in a talk like this one

Stefwynn: I'm Mylee Joseph, I also work at the State Library of NSW - a consultant for public libraries

Arqa: I'm Sarah Thorneycroft, academic developer @ University of New England

Bibliophile: My name is Jason, I'm a software developer, studying gamification in my off time and working on a game to help parents and children develop useful habits

Scholarly: oh cool. I just alt-tabbed to look up what "gamification" was. I did a presentation on the subject for a class, but didn't know it had a name

Bibliophile: I didn't either until recently :)

Arqa: It's an interesting concept - I'm not a fan of the term.

Illich: oh sorry - sick family today - Hi All, I'm Mike Bogle, educational technologist from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at UNSW

Franticread: great to see everyone here - and Mike I hope your family gets well soon

Bibliophile: If you have a suggestion for a better term, I'd love it - "gamification" is awkward

Arqa: I tend to just use things like 'game concepts' or 'game design' or 'game mechanics' depending on the situation. 'Gamification' has a bunch of marketing baggage that goes with it :)

Franticread: How about Crystle tells us about herself and her reseach?

Bibliophile: Sounds good

Inquiria: Hi, I'm Crystle Martin. I'm a disserator at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studying information literacy in the online affinity spaces around video games. My dissertation data came from WoW

Inquiria: I usually scale it down for the business card :)

I'm going to talk about my research and some of the research that our research team, PopCosmo, has done at UW

Scholarly: cool

Inquiria: My interest in info lit comes from my time as a reference librarian at Wayne State University in Detroit. I have a MLIS and came to grad school originally interested in making games that teach info lit skills, but through my work on PopCosmo with Constance Steinkuehler I got interested in naturally occurring info lit situations which are hard to study in other contexts but in virtual worlds are alot easier

Oh if anyone has any questions feel free to jump in any time

Bibliophile: When you say information literacy, what exactly do you mean?

Inquiria: What I've seen in the chatlogs and forum posts that I've analyzed is that people use complex info lit practices in these spaces

Stefwynn says: Could you give some examples of simple vs complex info lit practices please?

Scholarly: well, as I understand it, information literacy is being able to find what you need to know from a table, chart, video etc. and use it

Inquiria: So information literacy would be someone’s ability to recognize they need it, find and evaluate it for usefulness

Inquiria: Simple would be things like directional questions in WoW. More complex would be topics that are not easily answered in one sentence and can create debate amongst the community. Like speccing. My data is from two years ago so the talent trees and the like were different then but play strategies would also be an example

Franticread: and so people are using complex peer to peer discussions to help resolve their enquiry?

Inquiria: that's correct

Scholarly: I'm not sure I'd call anyone who writes the elitistjerks.com guides a "peer" :-)

Arqa: *chuckle*

Inquiria: they usually have :)

Franticread: of course...

Inquiria: There are some really complex skills used in the elitist jerks post, list statistical modeling and science reasoning, so good stuff going on there as well but not probably people I could claim as "peers"

Our lab actually did a study using WoW forum posts about priests and found that science reasoning is prevelant in debates about game play. That would be Steinkuehler and Duncan 2009 if anyone was interested (Steinkuehler, C., and S. Duncan. 2009. Informal scientific reasoning in online virtual worlds. Journal of Science Education and Technology, DOI: 10.1007/s10956-008-9120-8.)

Bibliophile: I was just going to ask. I'd love to see the methodology on that

Inquiria: If you send me an email I'll send you the article crystle.martin@gmail.com.
Another interesting study we've run recently is a reading study with adolescent boys who were disengaged with school and struggling readers

Franticread: what did you find out from this?

Inquiria: We tried setting up a study to have them read a school text and a game text, with the expectation that since they were all wow players we would see a improvement in their reading scores. Instead the scores flatlined

So we ran it again allowing them to choose the WoW text as long as they hadn't read it before and it was of a certain length

Scholarly: by a "game text", do you mean something lore-related, or gameplay-related?

Franticread: or a graphic novel or novel?

Inquiria: They were Wowwiki articles with a reading level of 11grade or higher

Scholarly: ah, so I'm guessing mostly lore then because most of the stuff about gameplay on Wowwiki hasn't been updated since BC

Inquiria: The second iteration found significant improvement. They self-corrected way more and were far more likely to struggle through passages they found difficult. Some lore and some articles about classes and specializations. So we found that there ability to choose was the most important factor. Interest in the topic made them more committed to getting through it

Bibliophile: Sounds like a strong argument for self-directed learning

Scholarly: yeah, at least at the high school level

Inquiria: I'd agree with that.

Stefwynn says: We see similar motivation for kids who have lower level reading skills, they'll struggle through something if it's a book that everyone is reading (eg. the Harry Potter / Twilight factor)

Scholarly: I doubt it'd scale to post-secondary level though, much as I'd like a PhD in mage theorycraft

Arqa: It could scale - there's lots of argument around formal academic writing vs other text types in terms of engaging readership

Inquiria: agreed Arqa

Arqa: Adults have the same needs around interest and engagement as kids - it's just academia seems to attract more miracles of obstinancy :D

Inquiria: I use interest driven learning as a basis for the masters classes I teach

Stefwynn: Are information literacy needs becoming more complex? Is a gaming environment like a microcosm of the wider world?

Inquiria: Information is becoming more ubiquitous and people deal with it in a variety of ways all the time, from choosing a book to choosing a political candidate

Stefwynn: So if it is ubiquitous ... does that mean we're less aware that we're using the skills daily?

Inquiria: I think that is true, and skills can always be improved. The interesting thing around game communities is the apprenticeship that happens to teach people to use their info lit skills

Bibliophile: Are game communities unique in that regard? That kind of teaching seems common to me

Reynârdine: it is, do a search on over the shoulder learning

Scholarly: yeah, in one community people say "L2 Wowhead", in another they say "Google is your friend"

It seems to me that mentoring or apprenticeships are a very effective way to learn those type of 'decision making' skills - with a knowledgeable guide.

Inquiria: Other spaces where people have common interest show similar activities. Most people will choose a high ranking guild mate to ask first - because they are a knowledgeable guide

Stefwynn: Perhaps with augmented reality we will be able to put knowledgeable guides into physical spaces at points of need as well?

Bibliophile: Possibly, but the system relies on a network of personal trust, I think. Or at least community reputation

Inquiria: That seems plausible, and mobile devices will help make knowleadgable guides more available

Scholarly: and I don't think spatial proximity in VR plays into it much

Inquiria: no spatial proximity is not necessary in VR

Scholarly: since I've given and gotten a lot more advice over /guild and /trade than when the character and I were together

Franticread: it has been great hearing about the research and the great ideas / discussion from all of you, any kind of final questions for Inquiria?

Bibliophile: How can we follow your research progress and new studies?

Scholarly: what would you say are the biggest downsides to info literacy from gaming?

Inquiria: You can follow my research on my website or on academia.edu , website is crystlemartin.com

Biggest downside: Hard to see what people are doing when they realize they need information. Most people don't explain their situation when they ask for information, it would be interesting to know what prompted it

Franticread: thank you so much Inquiria for all the amazing ideas you have presented us with today...

Scholarly: I mean downsides in terms of under-developed skills, not in terms of researchability

Inquiria: well there will be people who don't ask or don't know they have an information need but that is a similar problem in not virtual settings. Thanks for having me, if you have any questions send me an email, and if you are interested in games and learning check out our conference next June glsconference.org

Scholarly: will do

Arqa: Brilliant, ty :)

Franticread: in January - the participants will be the speakers, talking about what is happening in your area (library/university/workplace) with games...plus am interested in hearing what works for informing people of coming talks - so please send suggestions to ellenforsyth@gmail.com

Inquiria: Thank you

Scholarly: yeah, this was a great talk

Arqa: Agreed, thanks :)