I am not a gamer, and yet…
Too often, we hear the lament that school is boring, learning is hard work and no fun, and online learning in particular is overwhelming and isolating. Sasha Barab is a professor at Arizona State’s university whose work explores learner engagement in a digital world. Dr. Barab’s extensive history in the field of education and technology has focused on games for learning, transformational play, and online communities designed for social change, among other topics. His personal website (Barab, 2020) offers a broad overview of his work, including past and current endeavors.
In 2009, Barab was involved in a project called Quest Atlantis (Barab, 2020), introduced in this short video (Caldwell, 2021), that allowed learners around the world to participate in inquiry-style “quests” within a multiplayer game environment. The host application, Virtual World 3-Dimensional Universe, was taxing on hardware and internet services available in this era, yet it offers remarkable tools for building social presence. I had the privilege of teaching in some custom-builds using this application from 2015 to 2019, and experienced firsthand how engaging an environment like this can be. Pedagogies such as design thinking, inquiry, and problem or project-based learning are ideally suited to these innovative environments. Even just five or six years ago, this type of technology proved to have a “high threshold of participation” as Weller (2020, p. 99) would say, meaning that there were barriers to participation such as the complexity of user experience or insufficient infrastructure for use. I wonder, with the progression of hardware, software, internet service, and technological fluency, if the era is dawning that might allow broad adoption of fully interactive social learning contexts.
Barab’s more recent project, ThriveCast (Lifelab Studios, n.d.), is an intriguing combination of social media, communities, and stories. These are common threads through much of his work that resonate deeply with me.
References
Barab, S. (2020). Sasha Barab. https://sashabarab.org/ https://sashabarab.org/projects/quest-atlantis/
Barab, S. (2020). Quest Atlantis. Sasha Barab.
Caldwell, S. (2010, August 10). What is Quest Atlantis? [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ad6gLQN0tBY
Lifelab Studios (n.d.). ThriveCast. https://info.thrivecast.org/
Weller, M. (2020). 25 Years of Ed Tech. Athabasca University Press.
It’s interesting that you were able to work and teach using these environments for several years. That must have been a fascinating experience, and have provided some useful skill development.
I think you’re right that the era of these tools is just dawning, and we as teachers will likely be using them more into the future. Thank you for bringing Barab to my attention.