The Traveler

Issue date: 9/10/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Spencer Presley Jason Cercjie, 3-D artist for Electronic Sheep, takes the audience through the virtual world of "Second Life" at the Sim-U conference in the Reynolds Center Friday afternoon. The event focused on the role of video games in interactive learning.

The first Sim-U gaming conference at the UA was held Friday at the Reynolds Center, and was the beginning of what many students and faculty hope to be an ongoing discussion about the potential of video games in educational settings.

Speakers from Georgia, Arizona and New York were present, as well as one speaker who presented from New York using a virtual avatar [a digital version of herself] in the online world of "Second Life."

Topics discussed during the conference included the academic roles of video games, as well as the administrative costs to create and use games that are flexible, educational and fun.

"Human beings naturally learn through play," said Judd Ruggill, a professor from the University of Arizona who also co-directs the Learning Games Initiative, a research group that studies and builds video games. "Every student already has play-learning skills."

Ruggill and fellow LGI co-director Ken McAllister specifically referred to millennial students, those who come into academia already proficient with computers. "These students view play as a right," McAllister said. He also spoke about the games already in use academically and the advantages and disadvantages of their use. Using games to teach concepts like re-mediation, or defining media through the use of other media, can be novel, he said, but "novelty wears off quickly."

The panel of students, who discussed the potential educational roles of video games and their own experiences with games, was moderated by Ken Knoespel, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Quinten Rezin, a recent UA graduate who works for Buena Vista Games, talked about the appeal of simulations, in terms of failure without consequence.

"People will start playing a sim and then mess around with the aspects of it just to see what happens," he said, citing the ability to create disasters that level a town the player builds in "SimCity."

Continued...

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