Scholarship: Publications and Presentations
To date, I have compiled and created a good deal of texts and scholarship building on the idea of videogame-infused pedagogy I'm defining on this website and providing resources for. To that end, you'll find the body of scholarship I've devised below, including my thesis on videogame-infused pedagogy, all related conference presentations, publications, and works I've cited in these discussions as well.
Publications
Understanding Procedural Rhetoric
This article, published in 2017, specifically builds on the work I present on this website; in particular, my plans focused on teaching students how to understand rhetoric in videogames. The article itself (click the image to the left to access it online!) includes updated materials focused on using videogames in the classroom, including updated presentations and a list of games I will soon be adding to this site!
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The Three Ds of Procedural Literacy: Developing, Demonstrating, and Documenting Layered Literacies with Valve’s Steam for Schools
My article in this collection focuses on how videogames can be integrated into the writing classroom to help students develop and exhibit procedural literacies using games like Portal 2. In Bogost's work, he discusses what he calls "procedural rhetoric," or the way games make arguments using their mechanics, and "procedural literacies," or the ability to understand procedural rhetoric and identify it. I argue that asking students to create within the space of games and document that process fosters, and allows instructors to examine, how students develop procedural literacies by playing games through a combination of gameplay and writing.
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"Play and Praxis: Exploring the Implications of Videogame-Infused Pedagogy in the Composition Classroom"
My thesis project, completed in the summer of 2013, presents a full theoretical and practical examination of videogame-infused pedagogy, as discussed throughout this site. My thesis focuses on outlining this framework in much more robust detail than this site could, and shows the theoretical basis to everything you see done on this site. I strongly recommend clicking the image to the left if you're intrigued by my discussion of videogame-infused pedagogy here and would like to see something a bit more theory-dense rather than a more strict pedagogical focus as seen here due to the nature of this website.
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Past Presentation Materials
Here, for anyone interested, you can see my presentation materials from CCCC and Computers and Writing 2013-2015, including my PowerPoint files and handout files. Feel free to contact me if any of this interests you and/or if you would like to know more about my research into videogame-infused pedagogy. Thank you for your time and interest in my research! I look forward to continuing to present my work and hope to see everyone again in the coming years to provide updates on several facets of my research.
"Join the Nintendo Fun Club Today, Mac! : Historically Situating the Reciprocity Between Documentation and Player Roles"
I gave this presentation at Computers and Writing 2015. This presentation focuses on the historical relationship between play and documentation and the more recent shifts towards players gaining power as the producers of texts that support gameplay.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
"Nerfing and Buffing Digital Assessment: Reconsidering Writing Assessment in the Context of Student Design in Digital Spaces"
At CCCC 2015 I gave this presentation on how transitioning to a videogame-infused pedagogy welcomed me to revisit my assessment practices in my first year composition course. I argue that attempting to balance for a range of student skill-levels and experiences with things like computer skills, design skills, and gaming experience can inevitably lead to a "nerfed" assessment that cannot successfully measure what it purports to measure by deviating from course and assignment goals and outcomes.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
"Free Play! Shifting to Sustainable Practices for Videogames in Composition Pedagogy"
At CCCC 2014, I gave this presentation focused primarily on discussing sustainable ways instructors can use videogames in their classrooms based on the work I've done specifically for this site, but also, how this can be done in a range of additional ways by addressing common concerns for instructors attempting to implement videogames in their pedagogies.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
"Filling the Gaps by Teaching with Portals: Portal 2 and the Procedural Writing Classroom"
This presentation, given at Computers and Writing 2013, focused primarily on my uses for procedural rhetoric in the classroom, and how asking students to design procedural documentation using the software available in Steam for Schools helps them to engage with procedural knowledge and develop procedural literacy.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
"Play and Praxis: Exploring Connections Between Game Theory, Composition Studies, and the WPA Framework"
At CCCC 2013 I gave my first conference presentation focused on the materials I've generated focused on videogame-infused pedagogy, this presentation takes the first steps towards outlining the big ideas seen throughout this page as I began to incubate the ideas that videogame-infused pedagogy would eventually embody, based on additional research, theory, and experience teaching my course focused on videogames.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Works Cited
Below is a Works Cited page with references to several sources have informed my research into Videogame-Infused Pedagogy so far. For anyone interested in examining videogames in their own scholarship who is uncertain of where to begin, the works listed below provide several great entrances to this conversation. As much as there is a real gap in the literature for synthesizing game theory and composition studies, a far larger gap exists when considering the lack of a centralized resource for obtaining information relevant to game studies and composition. The document below is great for anyone starting out examining games, but also, what I hope to be a humble start to making texts like these more available and easier to find for those interested in this branch of research.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.