Gee, James Paul. "New Digital Media"

From Brock University's Digital Humanities Compendium

[edit] New Digital Media and Learning as an Emerging Area and “Worked Examples” as One Way Forward

by James Paul Gee

Review by Adam Christensen and Spencer Roberts, February 2010

Thesis: Can some common foundation for DMAL be established that allows collaboration, accumulation of knowledge, and the creation of a coherent area?

Fields versus disciplines: there are areas of study that are more specialized than “field” denotes, but are not yet institutionalized enough to be “disciplines.” Therefore, we need some new term for these areas. Gee suggests thematic disciplines, centered on a theme that cuts across disciplines and specializations.

Literacy is an earlier area of study from which we can draw conclusions and parallels that relate to DMAL. Literacy was approached by different disciplines, but what they ultimately failed to achieve was an agreement on the focal point of literacy (literacy itself or the culture it resides in) and a core set of tools, perspectives, and principles. The focus on literacy as a mental activity precluded a focus on the cultural aspects and caused people to focus more on the learning aspects of literacy.

DMAL has the reverse situation and problem. It is much less mental, and therefore might be considered simply a cultural study without ties to learning.

Gee describes the cultural pervasiveness of digital media and the desire to implement principles from video games, and even games themselves, in learning within and without the school system. The participation of society in the production of digital media suggests that there is a possibility for the study of how digital tools and new forms of convergent media, production, and participation, as well as powerful forms of social organization and complexity in popular culture, can teach us how to enhance learning in and out of school and how to transform society and the global world as well. (Gee 14) Gee discusses the “new literacy studies” which looked at the sociocultural, historical, and institutional aspects of a group of people and then determine how literacy is taken up and used within that group. Gee points out that it largely failed to accommodate the idea of “affordances” of different technologies, which are the effects a technology tends to have “all things being equal, in different contexts, in these effects are not otherwise mitigated.” If DMAL is to be successful where NLS was not, it must pay attention to these “affordances.” The lessons learned and directions from NLS influence the direction of DMAL studies.

He then brings in the concept of “situated cognition,” which is essentially the study of learning through experience and relation rather than through simple input and processing. This relates to NLS because it focused on the external factors involved in learning. NLS looks at the cultural and social aspects of an individual’s learning, while SC looks at the experience of the individual with the cultural and social situations. DMAL is the study of the methods of interaction and experience (ie. Books, games, medias, etc). NLS and SC can inform the study of DMAL by providing insight into how individuals of groups learn and incorporate techniques of learning.

New Literacies Studies involves the discussion of new forms of literacy and how different groups use them in different socio-cultural situations; this ties it closely to NLS.

New Media Literacy Studies look at how groups respond to and now produce media. Individuals now participate in the production of media, and become pro-ams (amateurs with high levels of expertise in a specific area). The study of DMAL will need to consider the results of this type of studies in approaching a world in which media interactivity is paramount. Gee argues that DMAL will only be established as an area if those involved in it become more open with each other about their “assumptions, influences, and approaches” (Gee 39).

He acknowledges that some have said that there needs to be an established set of “exemplars” that would allow the community of DMAL to come together cohesively. Rather than wait for the discourse community to come up with these naturally, he suggests creating “play exemplars” for use as tools of thought and debate. These could be suggested by any member of the community and then debated and votes cast as to whether they should be accepted as an exemplar. Gee also discusses the idea of the “worked example” in which the conventional solution is displayed so that students can manipulate the problem to find novel solutions. He suggests that many exemplars become working examples once they have established the area in which they are used.

Thus, Gee proposes that in order to build an area for DMAL, scholars or researchers should suggest play exemplars that are then built into working examples in order to spawn group debate and manipulation of the example (which is also the exemplar). This would allow the creation of exemplars in a new area in which there are no experts. Each contributor would concurrently be both expert and student, which would lead the community to both create and debate the area as it is built. He then presents an example of one possible worked example, in which the Yu-Gi-Oh! Card game is presented as having potential as a learning tool with regard to linguistics.

The point of this example is to demonstrate that the DMAL community will debate the example and ultimately refine it or reject it. Either response will serve to indicate the differences and similarities between definitions of the area of DMAL. If the example is rejected, then more must be suggested. If it is accepted, then it must be refined and extended. If either of these two possibilities is successful, then the DMAL community will have begun establishing an area for itself.

Gee seems to be writing mainly for those within the community of Digital Media and Learning. His focus is largely to give some insight into the current situation and provide a possible solution that will bring the varying approaches together in creating a coherent area that DMAL covers.