Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games: A Potential Model of CSCL@Work

Abstract

Workplace studies and messages in the popular press suggest that the American workforce has become increasingly ineffective and lacks appropriate twenty-first century skills (Friedman, The world is flat: a brief history of the twenty-first century. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006). This condition has resulted from not only the outdated educational environment but also tumultuous changes in business dynamics that have put pressures on business, as well as education, to be better, faster, and stronger: in short, more competitive at every juncture. The technology-rich and collaborative processes central to modern business practices involve dynamic learning leveraging tools, resources, and networks whereas workers engage in critical thinking, problem solving, or innovating (Hagel and Brown, From push to pull: Emerging models for mobilizing resources. Working paper, October. Retrieved from http://www.johnseelybrown.com/pushmepullyou4.72.pdf, 2005). However, these skills are not the stuff of the current standard-based regime influencing K-12 education (Gee, Good video games and good learning: collected essays on video games, learning and literacy. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 2007; National Center on Education and the Economy, Tough choices or tough times: The report of the new commission on the skills of the American workforce, Revised. Jossey Bass, Sanfrancisco, CA, 2008; Wagner, The global achievement gap: why even our best schools don’t teach the new survival skills our children need—and what we can do about it. Basic Books, New York, 2008), and they are not the types of learning modeled in the lecture halls permeating postsecondary education (Gee, Society and higher education. Working paper. Retrieved from http://jamespaulgee.com/node/50, 2010). Current educational practices in mainstream formal education are hard-pressed to model the types of computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) and CSCW practices that could be efficacious if implemented in the workplace.

This chapter offers an example of related practice based upon informal gaming and affinity space (Gee, Situated language and learning: a critique of traditional schooling. Routledge, New York, 2004; Gee, Good video games and good learning: Collected essays on video games, learning and literacy. Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York, 2007) involvement associated with massively multiplayer online (MMO) role-playing games. Findings depict MMO gaming as an informal learning space providing exposure to collaborative workflow processes whereas socio-technical resources are accessed and leveraged within the process of doing the work of the game. Concluding discussion suggests models of collaborative and collective learning processes in these online communities of practice and affinity spaces may in fact inform new conceptions of virtual collaboration within the workplace and across business entities.