Ed 690: Case Study

690 was probably the most challenging and satisfying course I took in the Master's program. Due mostly to the topic of my study, educational video games, the fervor with which I applied myself to the various class projects in Ed 690 would be difficult to match in any other arena. Educational video games are something that have fascinated me for some time, mostly because I witness each day in my students the engrossing aspects of video games in people's lives. This particular project arose only after I had completed a lengthy literature review on current and past educational video game research, devised and administered my own survey on a popular massive multi-player online role playing game (MMORPG) and analyzed the results. The culminating assignment was to present to the rest of the class my findings, explain my methods and hypothesize about shortcomings and opportunities.

It was exactly because I had become so immersed in the world on educational games throughout the semester that this final assignment became such a test of my communicative abilities. The universe of concepts that exist within the gaming world can be difficult for the uninitiated to grasp under the best of circumstances, but in my case I was also attempting to convey my own study of that universe and the implications that I believed arose from my findings. It was a balancing act from the beginning to ensure that I included enough background information about the world of educational games so that my audience would understand my study, but not too much that it overshadowed the assignment itself.

Ultimately the presentation turned out as well as I could have expected. Given the time constraints I felt as though I was able to adequately convey the environment in which my research was taking place while maintaining the focus on the actual work I had done within that environment. I showed the raw data that I had analyzed and explained how I had arrived at the conclusions I did. While I may have liked to have more time to expound on the future of the research I had done, I was able to sneak a little bit of information about upcoming possibilities that made the audience realize that what I was presenting on was a dynamic and current set of issues sure to change dramatically in the near future.

By filtering out the most pertinent information from a veritable glut of material I was able to convey to my audience the background, content, methods and conclusions of a semester-long study on Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games and Players' Motivations.