Today’s Plan:
- Worknet Review
- Anonymous User Survey
- Homework
Worknet Review
Useful links:
- UNCO Library
- Google Scholar (you can find articles here, but then have to search to see if our library has them)
Anonymous User Survey
Before we leave today I want you to take five minutes and read and think about these two prompts:
- Are these worknets helping you understand the research articles you are reading. Give me a Likert Scale answer: 4 (very helpful) 3 (somewhat helpful) 2 (somewhat a waste of time) 1 (really big waste of time).
- Do you have a question/comment/concern about how class is going so far? Or just a general question about University life/work?
Homework
Reminder: there’s no class on Monday. Enjoy the long weekend. Touch grass.
Marc: Remember to construct a keywords list in the collaborative doc on Wednesday (in addition to adding articles–it might be time to develop topic specific workspaces).
Next Wednesday we’ll meet in Ross 1240. Between now and then I’d like you to do two things. A research annotation (put this in your google doc as worknet annotation #1) and a second worknet (article #2 bibliographic pass, article #2 semantic pass, article #2 affinity pass).
First, I want you to craft a research annotation for the first academic article you worknetted (that’s a real wonky looking verb). Mueller’s gambit is that the process of analyzing an article from different angles helps us understand the material better. It widens our frames of interpretation and the depth of our reading. My gambit is that reading research *before* you try and articulate a paper topic, research question, or argument also helps you engage the article better–since you are engaging it on *its* terms instead of yours.
So let’s test that. I’m going to ask you to write a research annotation for the first article you analyzed. A research annotation should have at least three paragraphs. It can have more. I expect annotations to reflect 30-45 minutes of writing time.
Paragraph One: the first paragraph covers the purpose, findings, and recommendations of the article. This is a really condensed summary. For instance:
Miguel Sicart’s 2013 book Beyond Choices offers a framework for evaluating whether video games offer rich and complicated “ethical” choices or shallow and simplistic “instrumental” ones. Sicart draws on a wide range of game and design theory–especially theory on wicked problems and interviews with game developers to construct a lens for analyzing games. This lens focuses primarily on the nature of player complicity, the ambiguity and rewards for decisions, and how a game does or doesn’t prompt a player to reflect on the grounds and consequences of their decisions.
I can’t give details about the whole book in a paragraph–(for instance, I don’t go into the wide range of games he discusses–from Walking Dead to Fallout to Elder Scrolls to Papers Please). But you walk away knowing his three most important findings–that games need to build player complicity, that games need to include wicked problems, and that games have to force you to reflect on why you chose what you chose to be considered an “ethical” game.
Paragraph Two: the second paragraph details the methods, including how many subjects were in the study, how subjects were found, the location of the study (if relevant), the length of the study, how data was analyzed/synthesized, and any other significant details. Notice how I dropped a single sentence about methods in the first paragraph–here I would have to expand it (e.g., Sicart identifies his method as “postphenomenological,” meaning blah blah blah. He draws extensively on Person W. Name’s theory of Wicked Problems, which are blah blah blah. His penultimate chapter offers a list of 10 criteria blah blah blah. In terms of games, he focuses much attention on choice-based games, but also discusses a few games without choices such as Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 and 4.
Paragraph Three: the third paragraph does some thinking by connecting the article to other research (this thinking can compare or contrast). This is the hardest part, since unlike the other paragraphs you are called upon to invent material rather than simply summarize it. This is also the part that helps you begin to write the research paper. At this stage of the process, this is kind of a free write paragraph. Test out ideas. Think about how this connects to other things you’ve read. Perhaps pose a question. Think. React. Respond.
Second, I want you to read another academic article and put it through the three steps of the worknet process: bibliographic pass, semantic pass, and affinity pass. We will write the annotation for this second article in next Wednesday’s class.
I think we realized that the bibliographic pass really just needs to focus attention on the centralized and significant articles. Don’t bother documenting all of the passing references. That should help save some time.
