Teaching in WoW
by Amanda Rivera 
Sep 28th 2007 at 2:00PM
Henry Lowood, a Library Science teacher at San Jose State University recently took his online "Games and Libraries" class on a virtual field trip: into World of Warcraft. As he explains it on the How They Got Game 2 site, the lesson he was teaching dealt with the usefulness of online games in the library, and his students for the most part had no exposure to online gaming, and so the class logged in for class credit.
They started their own guild on the Windrunner realm so that they would have their own chat channel, and had to deal with the issue of mass death since most of the students were using 10-day trial accounts and thus were too low level to survive long. Despite the challenge, the online forum proved a successful environment in which to teach, and within WoW the students were able to encounter the community of online gamers, witness their teacher (a paladin) duel a priest to illustrate the PvP aspects of the game, and even received some resurrection from their instructor when they died along the way, "a first in terms of faculty-student relations."
Now, those of us who have taught know the difficulties of keeping a classroom of students engaged, so I think this is a pretty novel way to do so. It helps that the lesson was specifically about online gaming honestly, but I wonder how well this would apply to a discussion on say virtual storytelling, or even a history lesson on warfare. I know that would be one class session my students would have never skipped out on.
Filed under: Virtual selves, Odds and ends
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Goldwolf Sep 28th 2007 2:34PM
Yes, never before has a teacher been able to so literally Rez a student.
It's awesome but... it still seems like a stretch from the teacher to get a chance to play WoW at work! Lucky kids!
TheMinority Sep 28th 2007 2:58PM
I think WoW, if used in the right classes, can be a great teaching tool.
The AH can be used in economics and people who are taking psychology-related classes will be able to observe the relationships between online players as well as investigate the desire of male players to create female characters. Those who are taking programming or going to a field wherein they will create games or other similar programs will enjoy the technical marvels in WoW. Even people in literature will have a unique opportunity to play a game wherein you are a part of the history/mythology.
It's all how you explain it to your supervisors. ;)
Tyler Sep 28th 2007 2:59PM
woot Windrunner!
Shawn Sep 28th 2007 3:26PM
I'm a librarian and I'm jealous we didn't have something like this when I was in library school :D
I always thought it would be interesting for students in a Organizational Behavior class to have a project that involved starting a guild (or whatever) in an MMO. I think it would give the students an interesting insight into the activities involved with recruiting and managing a large group of people. It would be something that they would have a hard time doing as a project in the "real world", but easily done in a virtual environment.
I see great potential for learning in virtual worlds.
Gnomewise Sep 28th 2007 3:38PM
An interview with a college professor who taught an entire for-credit Leadership Concepts class in WoW can be found here:
http://www.wcradio.com/archive/farmstatus/wow-wtc-02-16-2007.mp3
Or, search for the February 16, 2007 archive of the "WoW Things Considered" show/podcast here:
http://www.wcradio.com/archives.php?selectShow=51&start=20
'Wise
Ed Sep 28th 2007 3:39PM
I took a class with Professor Lowood when I was at Stanford called "History of Computer Game Design". The best part of the class was the weekly guest lecturers that would come in. One time the Asheron's Call developers from Microsoft came in and gave everyone a free lifetime subscription (except that AC2 was coming out the next month). The highlight was probably when Will Wright came in for a talk. Anyway, it's always nice to feel like games are a part of higher education, outside of the late night Counterstrike sessions when you procrastinating.
gozerthagozerian Sep 28th 2007 4:27PM
How would this contribute to a history lesson on warfare?
Hmmm, let's see.
"Leonidas and his Spartans were able to defeat the Persians because they had spent 12,000 more hours in arenas and AV, and thus had a combined 10,000 more resilience than the Persian infantry at Thermopylae, who were geared in mere blues. Ancient warfare was not about military discipline and tactics, it was about epic dropz, NOOB!"
Kohaku Sep 28th 2007 5:46PM
Currently a student at Uni of CA, Berkeley...
I wish someone would offer a De-Cal class on WoW, though... it's a facinating world in there... But for studying, lets keep it to humanities (ie, psychology, anthropology, sociology, etc) because last time I played, I wanted to experience a free fall and I did it on the waterfall near Darnassus and my character (who was called Cysteine) fell with constant velocity (no accellration)... no gravity in Darnassus 'cause it's a giant tree? My point is, no physics...
Also, for high schoolers, my friends and I were discussing of asking College Board to make an AP WoW or AP WoW History test...
Sorcefire Sep 28th 2007 6:43PM
After reading the associated blog entry I am still confused as to how teaching a course in WoW related to Library sciences. Can anyone explain the correlation?
Bobby Hansen Sep 28th 2007 8:28PM
Sorcefire: I'm a Grad Student in Library Sciences, and any social networking area is an area where libraries are looking at. There's a giant Second Life area called Information Island, and several LIS colleges have Second Life campuses, all set up by Info Scientists and Librarians. WoW is just an extension.
Erica Olson Sep 29th 2007 10:54AM
Must be nice to be able to play a video game and get college credit for it.
Is there a class that you can take for an English requirement that will focus on L33T speak?
Henry Lowood Oct 1st 2007 12:56PM
Hello,
I'm Henry Lowood, the guy who taught this class. I noticed the post here on a google search and read the comments. Let me respond to a couple of the questions:
1. Goldwolf, actually we did this on a Friday evening, because most of us (including myself at Stanford) have day jobs. This is a grad course for students working towards a Master's Degree in Library and Information Studies. And, er, I was at home the whole time, with my son helping me and my wife wondering what the heck was going on.
2. For the various questions why we did this. There is a lot of interest in library-land in using virtual and game worlds for library services (to be where the patrons are, to attract kids to libraries, etc.) plus another part of the course is about game collections and preservation in academic libraries. The thing is, I find there is a lot of hype about this subject, and some of it is because librarians or educators don't actually play these games or even visit the virtual worlds. So I wanted all of the students to get a tour through a real game world.
3. The students will be writing up project proposals relating to the topic of "games and libraries," and there is a lot of reading. (The student who took my Stanford course can probably vouch for that.) It's not a light course at all.
4. We've also had class sessions using xfire and will have one in Second Life, as well, probably to show how machinima works and to have a tour of a couple of Stanford projects in there.
Hey, thanks for the interest in this. Feel free to contact me if you want more details.
Henry