Videogames and Distributed Teaching and Learning Systems

This poster develops a theory of distributed teaching and learning systems (DTALS) and provides two case studies using the videogame Dota 2 and the game development program Twine. DTALS extends work on “Big ‘G’ games” and “affinity spaces” (Gee, 2003) with a particular emphasis on the teaching that occurs across a range of sites within and around videogames, and what that might tell us about teaching and learning more broadly. Furthermore, we are interested in understanding the relationships among these spaces, resources, practices, and people. Rather than viewing them as a haphazard collection of game-related teaching events or tools, we argue for understanding them as comprising a complex, dynamic, adaptive, and distributed system.