Game effect workshop: Issues of identity, learning and young gamers

Date: 2nd April 2009
Venue: WKWSCI Level 4 Conference Room
Time: 10am to 5pm
(Light refreshments will be provided)

The following talks are open to public:

Talk 1: Gaming and the New Culture of Learning
Speaker: Dr. Douglas Thomas
Time: 2pm – 3pm

Abstract
When people think about learning, mostly what they think about is  schools. And when people think about schools, mostly what they think about  is teachers. This book takes a different approach. The kind of learning  that will define the 21st century is not likely to be found in a classroom.  At least not in today's classroom. It is the kind of learning that is going  on outside the classroom. It is everywhere and it is powerful.  Unfortunately, most of it is unrecognizable to us. It is what we are  calling the new culture of learning and it is grounded in a very simple  question, which has some surprising answers: what happens when we all start  learning from each other?

There is a revolution in learning that it happening all around us, but  because it doesn't look like what we expect learning to look like, most of  it goes unnoticed. It is a cultural phenomenon that underlies a large  number of the experiences we have, mostly with new media. It is affecting  us in myriad ways. It is learning without books, without teachers, and  without classrooms. Yet, without this new culture of learning, we probably  wouldn't have many of things that make up the current generation of online  tools. No Wikipedia. No Facebook or MySpace. No YouTube. No online games.

The goal of this talk is not to argue that classrooms are obsolete or that  teaching no longer matters. Our goal is quite the opposite. We believe that  this new culture of learning has the power to augment learning in nearly  every facet of education. It is a very powerful way of thinking about  learning, but it requires a shift in our thinking about education and  learning (along with a whole host of other things). It requires us to look  for learning resources in some pretty unlikely places. But most of all, it requires us to think about what it means to be living in a time where things are changing faster than they ever have before.

About the Speaker

Douglas Thomas is an Associate Professor in the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California (USC) and a fellow at the USC Annenberg Center. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in Communication in 1992 and specializes in critical theory and cultural studies of technology. His current research focuses on the uses of virtual worlds for education and global civic engagement.

Douglas is founding editor of Games & Culture: A Journal of Interactive Media, a quarterly international journal that aims to publish innovative theoretical and empirical research about games and culture within the context of interactive media. His books include: Hacking Culture (2002), a study of the cultural, social, and political dimensions of computer hacking, Reading Nietzsche Rhetorically (1998), an examination of the role of representation in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, Technological Visions: The Hopes and Fears that Shape New Technologies (2004), and Cybercrime: Law Enforcement, Security and Surveillance in the Information Age (2000).

Douglas is a founding member of the Critical and Cultural Studies division of the National Communication Association and has served as Chair of the division, serves on the advisory board for the Research Center for Cyberculture Studies at the University of Washington, and is currently Vice-President of the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) and Program Chair for the ACM/SIGGRAPH Video Game Symposium. He has testified before the US Congress on issues of computer hacking, cyberterrorism, and critical infrastructure protection.

Talk 2: Cyberspace brings identity debate
Speaker: Dr Sangmin Whang
Time: 330pm – 430pm

Abstract

Cyberspace brings identity debate. On line game becomes a new frontier for identity development of next generation. With the emergence of cyberspace, the conception of mind had to go through a new level of change. Cyberspace is not a place where humans reveal their minds as a secure and stable one, but where they show their minds through various roles and variable forms. One of the representative cases of one’s mind being shown in cyberspace is the use of digital images like avatar. In addition, exaggerated behavior or extreme deviation in cyberspace indicates that the mind cannot be invariably stable all the time.

For example, a person who is shy and unable to actively build relationships with other people transforms into a leader of a blood alliance or a charismatic leader of communities while they are online. Sometimes, these types of people, having seen their new aspects in cyberspace, successfully change themselves in reality. This is a situation where the cyber mind of a person replaces the real one. Teenagers often choose to stay in cyberspace for as long as possible as they put more meaning on the cyber selves than the real ones.

As cyberspace experience becomes part of daily lives, chances also increase that people will see their minds transform while they are online. What they see in cyberspace could be similar to their real minds but it could also vastly differ from their ordinary minds. The co-existence of the real identity and the cyber identity suggests that one human body can have multiple minds. Minds in cyberspace clearly differ from the ones in reality or the ones that a modern society has presumed. In it, a mind can be multi-dimensional and self-evolving. Digital reproduction, transmission and transformation in online game are exactly how minds move around and exist in cyberspace.  Instead of conflicting with each other, individual personalities and ideas perform their given role in real and game worlds. In this case, whether each entity can peacefully operate within the group as a part is the key to success. This cyber complexity indirectly shows how people’s minds are complicated in cyberspace. Online gamers have also shown us how multiple identities are integrated into the reality.

About the Speaker

As a psychologist, Dr. Whang’s main interest was on the change of human thinking & behaviors in digital age, by that of social-cultural circumstances. Since the internet has stirred up his imagination, he has been making a study on the 'cyber psychology' and 'youth culture' with an emphasis on online gamers and its related culture. His book, "There is another 'me' in the cyber space", written in 2000 is estimated as a new and striking approach on account of analyzing the psychological laws of cyberspace in Korean society. His books, ‘New Generation of Korean in Cyberspace (2003)’, “Digital Geeks creating future digital consumption (2008)” were  epitomic works on changes in the cyberspace of Korean society in relation to youth culture and their virtual and consuming behaviors. He currently contributes to the research on the Asian youth culture through role playing on-line game (MMORPG), such as ‘Lineage’, ‘Mabinogi’, and ‘Maple Story’. He can be reached through e-mail, swhang@yonsei.ac.kr.