The "Psychology of Video Games and Entertainment" (currently Psyc309V, Fall 2008) will pull together many of the diverse issues in psychology into one challenging course. The class will be taught in one of the University of Maryland Teaching Theaters and will involve all of the aspects of teaching with technology from media presentation to online discussions and assignments. Students will contribute to Wikipedia articles on games and psychology and collaborate in team projects.
Video games and digital entertainment are becoming more and more consuming, pervasive, and engaging. Virtually every student on campus has a history and attachment to video games and digital media. A course on this topic will help to engage students in many of the elements and theories in psychology in a space that is of particular interest to them. The "Psychology of Video Games and Entertainment" (currently Psyc309V, Fall 2008) will pull together many of the diverse issues in psychology into one challenging course.
Game playing is an important human activity from childhood to adolescence through adulthood and old age. Early in life, games involve developmental learning, socialization, and play. Digital games differ in many different ways. It is important to characterize them in terms of both their theme and structure and in terms of the options that they provide along a few major dimensions.
Video games provide opportunities to engage in extreme, risky, and aggressive behaviors that would not be possible or socially acceptable in the real world. Some video games, true to the concept of a game, provide representations of reality that allow people to participate vicariously in combat, use of weapons, and different forms of violent and extreme behavior.
To many of us, particularly in education, entertainment for the sole purpose of being entertained is pointless without some positive, lasting outcome. Entertainment that leaves a message, a learning experience, and a positive change in one's life serves two purposes: entertainment and education. While this is inherently the goal of many writers, artists, composers, and performers, edutainment is specifically a form of entertainment that is meant to educate the audience or participant in the process of being entertained. It takes a familiar media of entertainment such as television programs, movies, cartoons, or video games and embeds educational content.
The class will pull together many of the diverse issues in psychology into one challenging course. The class will be taught in one of the University of Maryland Teaching Theaters (PLS 1129) and will involve all of the aspects of teaching with technology from media presentation to online discussions and assignments. Students will contribute to Wikipedia articles on games and psychology and collaborate in team projects. The Teaching Theater screens will be used to demonstrate games to the whole class and to let them participate in the play.
The tentative course outline is as follows:
Week 1: Introduction to Gaming and Media
Week 2: The Psychology of Games
Week 3: The History of Video Games
Week 4: A Taxonomy of Digital Games
Week 5: Human Factors of Controllers
Week 6: Virtual Reality
Week 7: Psychological Attraction to Video Games
Week 8: The Gender Gap
Week 9: Age Issues
Week 10: Social, Cultural, and Ethical Issues
Week 11: Violence and Video Games
Week 12: Skill Acquisition
Week 13: Digital Convergence and the iPod Generation
Week 14: Edutainment and Educational Software
Week 15: The Future of Games and Media
Materials for the course will come from several published texts, a number of journal articles, websites for games, documentaries, and the video games and entertainment sources themselves. For example, in 1983 Loftus and Loftus published a book, "The Mind at Play: The Psychology of Video Games." Since then, several edited book have been published and a number of journal articles have been published in "Cyberpsychology & Behavior," "Interacting with Computers," "The International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, Cyberpsychology Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, and The International Journal of Computer Game Research." http://gamestudies.org/