Digital Media & Learning
Several years ago my research on how language, visual representations, and other modes of meaning are integrated in multimedia led me to computer and video games (digital games) as the cutting edge of new media that do this well.
I initially proposed doing research to compare how educational media for learning science do this compared to commercial games (see NSF proposal below). I then decided to look just at the games, and this work led me to see the importance of taking players’ feelings into account (see new work on Feeling & Meaning). Currently I am continuing to analyze video and fieldnote records of elementary-school kids playing with and around games and similar new media (see Affective Learning Together volume; and Emotion, Play, & Learning, in preparation).
Our lab (LCHC) at UCSD is also organizing a series of meetings of leading researchers looking at how to document and assess learning in informal, media-rich environments. Members of the lab are conducting a number of related studies.
Lemke & van Helden (2009): New Learning Cultures -- Identities, Media, and Networks
Games and Learning [AERA Conference 2013]
Affective Learning Together (2013)
Emotion, Play, and Learning: Gaming After School [in preparation]
Play and Learning in a Living System [Draft]
Designing for Adaptability: Open, Incomplete, Alive? [.ppt for DML 2011]
Games, Transmedia Franchises, & the New Cultural Order
Place, Pace, and Meaning: Multimedia Chronotopes
Investigating Interactive Immersive Worlds [Proposal to NSF 2006]
Documenting and Assessing Learning in Informal and Media-rich Environments [MacArthur Report, 2012]
LCHC: Laboratory for Comparative Human Cognition, UCSD