On October 15 the first of several MAGIC contributions to the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s MOOC on Video Games & Learning went live to a world-wide audience. The course features video segments from Andrew Phelps, Director of the MAGIC Center, as well as Elizabeth Lawley, Director of the Lab for Social Computing at MAGIC, as ‘guest instructors’.
The first online lectures, in week 2 of the course, features Professor Phelps discussing the emergence of games as a topic of educational study over the past decade, as well as the ways in which games lend themselves towards systems-oriented exploration and patterns. Dr. Lawley’s lecture is a discussion of environmental control in game worlds, and the relationship of this concept to education. The Video Games & Learning course is described as a best-in-class distance education course offered through Coursera, and is taught by Professor Constance Steinkuehler and Professor Kurt Squire who co-direct the Games+Learning+Society (GLS) Center at UW-Madison. The course has attracted over 30,000 students.