Hints, Advice, and Maybe Cheat Codes: An English Topics Course About Computer Games

Authors

  • Kevin Moberly Old Dominion University

Abstract

Computer games embody one of the central challenges facing English Studies: the question of how to adapt pedagogies originally intended to address the exigencies of print culture to artifacts that produce meaning through a number of different and, at times, desperate mediums. This article describes a 300-level English topics course that I designed in response to this challenge. Focusing on the course syllabus, assignments, and other documents, it provides an overview of the course’s scaffolded, social-constructivist pedagogy. It explains how I employ specific elements of this pedagogy to accomplish two ostensibly contradictory goals: 1)to help students understand how the methodologies traditionally privileged by English Studies are relevant to computer games; and 2) to help them recognize and thereby address the limitations of these methodologies through scholarship, game design, or other forms of critical performance.

Author Biography

Kevin Moberly, Old Dominion University

KEVIN MOBERLY is an Associate Professor of Rhetoric, Digital Media, and Game Studies at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. His research focuses on understanding how computer-enabled manifestations of popular culture reflect, contribute to, and transform contemporary cultural and political discourses. In particular, he is interested in the way that contemporary computer games encode labor, often blurring already uneasy distinctions between work and play. He is currently working on a number of academic projects, including a book-length study about medieval-themed computer games, which he is co-authoring with his brother, Brent Moberly.

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Published

2015-01-29

Issue

Vol. 4 No. 1 (2015)

Section

Syllabi

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