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Tutorial
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"Teaching Social Sciences in Virtual Worlds"
By
Dana R. Herrera
and
András
Margitay-Becht,
Saint Mary's College of California, USA |
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Bio:
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Dana R. Herrera, Ph.D, is currently an Associate
Professor at Saint Mary’s College
of California. Dr. Herrera teaches courses in cultural and
biological anthropology.
She has conducted research studies in the Philippines,
United States, and Hungary.
Her current scholarly interests include Game Studies,
Filipino immigration, and the
life histories of people who are the first in their family
to attend college.
One of her latest publications, "Fun is Learning: A Case
Study of Gaming as
Education in Virtual Worlds," is featured in the
international "Learning in
Higher Education" anthology (Copenhagen Business School
Press, 2008). |
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András Margitay-Becht is currently a faculty member
in School of Economics and Business Administration at
Saint Mary's College of California. Holding master’s
degrees
in finance, stochastic methods and computer science and a
doctorate in economics,
he focuses on agent-based simulation of economic
development and the international financial aiding
process. His primary research is on incorporating
sociological, anthropological and political effects into
economic simulations, while his alternate research
examines ludology and its influence on education and
corporate management. |
Abstract:
"Over the course of the last decade virtual worlds moved
from cutting-edge new technology to a well- known
social phenomenon, in which over 100 million people take part
worldwide. As professors of social science the authors
have noticed that using examples based on these virtual
realities greatly increases the understanding and
knowledge/skills retention of students. Based on this
experience the authors devised a series of courses (held in
2008, 2009 and scheduled for 2011) that utilized the virtual
environments of World of Warcraft, Second Life and
Hellgate: London to teach students about Cultural
Anthropology, Economics, Finance, Business Administration,
Computer Science and Functional Analysis.
The authors propose an educational tutorial session based on
the above courses and related research project. The
tutorial begins with a short introduction to a virtual world,
including the role and functionality of avatars and
basic navigation. A more thorough introduction to the social
phenomena will then follow (chat channels, emoticons,
guilds, parties), including a discussion of how specific
attributes of the world to support socializing (character
looks,
vanity items, mounts, pets etc.). The majority of the
presentation will feature an interactive discussion of how a
class is held in such an environment and how the parallels
between real world and virtual world features can be used
to access social science material.
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