WoW Learning

The WoW Learning project will have several phases and use mixed research and data collection methods. I’m gathering demographic data about World of Warcraft avatars as well as about their human operators. I’m posing subjective questions via surveys, like “Why do you play World of Warcraft”, to examine people’s motivations and goals. I’m also going to be engaging in a substantial amount of ethnographic research, which has me observing and participating in activities with my own character—activities not too dissimilar to what I have been doing for the last five years in the game—but recording observations and conversations as things occur. As a result, some people will be interviewed in-game; others may be asked for interviews via voice chat systems. Finally, I expect to be looking at communication that occurs on forums.

As with all university-level research involving the participation of people, the WoW Learning project needed to secure approval from the relevant ethics committee in Informatics at the University of Sussex. In the interests of transparency and full disclosure, I’ve attached a copy of the approval to this posting, which you can download yourself.

The submitted proposal also had a project information sheet and an online survey consent form. I have not included those here.

If you have any comments or suggestions for improving the transparency or quality of interactions, I’d love to hear them. Virtual worlds ethnographic research and online data collection via forums is a relatively new area and the issue of what constitutes “informed consent” is still evolving. I’d also love to know if you found this a useful resource document for you own work.

Downloadable Resources

• WoW: Learning Ethics Approval (PDF – 312 kB)

As part of a course under development at The Open University, I was approached as a known World of Warcraft player and asked to write a short paragraph or two on why I play World of Warcraft. I freely admit to failing to only write a short paragraph or two, but that’s probably because I’m passionate about World of Warcraft and my activities in it, especially given the prominence it plays in my life in so many areas. Read on to find out why I play World of Warcraft.

This article was originally posted at E1n1verse on August 4, 2009 as World of Warcraft and Me: A True Confession

Read the rest of this entry »

Coming from a background in higher education via distance education and online communities, I am interested in the link between people’s motivations and the learning that comes from building communities of practice (Wenger, 2008), particularly in the 26+ demographic where 75% of the Open University’s new students originate. In this two-year project, I will explore the motivations of World of Warcraft players and examine the learning that takes places in their guilds and alliances, both in game and out.

Where does the learning come from? Learning is everywhere in the game. In order to contribute to a team effectively, people need to learn to play their characters well. Each character has specific abilities and learning to play well requires a substantial time investment. Other people are interested in more effectively killing things and devote hours outside of the game to reading about their character’s role and how to improve on it, often in very tiny increments. Forum discussions abound about the best equipment for particular classes and models are constructed of how in-game equipment will perform under certain conditions.

Read the rest of this entry »