Spencer Post-Doc to Study RuneScape

Great news the other day – I got the National Academy of Education / Spencer Post-Doctoral Fellowship to do a second cognitive ethnography on an MMO, but this I’ll be focusing on RuneScape – a title with more active unique subscriptions in America than WoW but played overwhelmingly by a much younger audience (12-17 typically).  I’m really excited about the work and looking forward to being part of their network of scholars again. If this is anything like the Pre-Doctoral Fellowship I got during graduate school, I think it will be a will be a great catalyst for some of my work.

Official Abstract: Cognition and Learning in Online Games for Adolescents
Despite dismissals as “torpid” and inviting “inert reception” in popular books and press outside of peer review, videogames (especially online games) have emerged as an important research topic in educational research; however, we have seen very little impact on the in-school performance of those who play. The goal of this project is to explore this contradiction by assessing the educational merit of games designed for and played by youth instead of adults (as typically studied) and by examining how games are situated in young people’s everyday lives. I propose to conduct a cognitive ethnography of the game Runescape, the most popular online game with children (ages 10-16) that would include longitudinal study of 8-12 gaming youth from local schools in order to assess the impact of gameplay on their day-to-day lives, social relationships, and school work. Data analysis would focus on assessing what youth learn through online gameplay, how that learning aligns or conflicts with educational standards, and how such games fit into the fabric of their everyday experience. Results from this work would help us better understand the impact of online games on the social and cognitive development of young players.