Professor Sawantdesai uses Massively Multiplayer Online Games to help students learn about interpersonal?communication while exploring a virtual world
By James Baggett
In the last 20 years, video games have become an industry for the masses, having found a place in millions of homes. Now they have found their way from the living room to the college classroom. Teachers use Massively Multiplayer Online Games, or MMOGs, to examine interactions between real people in imaginary worlds.
Played on the Internet, MMOGs involve hundreds or thousands of players in an evolving and largely interactive world. A user creates an avatar, or virtual character, and then is able to explore the world and interact with other users' avatars.
But what are video games - proven to be addictive, criticized for being violent, and traditionally shunned by schools - doing on college campuses?
Darshan Sawantdesai, a UP communications professor, has assigned an experiment with a MMOG in his Fundamentals of Interpersonal Communication class. Sawantdesai likens the MMOG revolution to that of the mobile phone.
"Fifteen years ago you wouldn't see many young people with cell phones," he says. And now cell phones are everywhere.
Like mobile phones, MMOGs connect people that might be thousands of miles apart.
"We're looking at new ways of communicating," Sawantdesai says, of his MMOG assignment. "MMOGs are the future. They aren't going anywhere."
Based on the numbers, it wouldn't seem so. Currently, 9 million people subscribe to World of Warcraft, a popular MMOG, according to the company that created it, Blizzard Entertainment. And that is only one of many of these types of games.
"There was a time when video games were one dimensional. Now there is social interaction. You're interacting, forming alliances, and ultimately surviving," Sawantdesai says. "You're not just firing missiles at each other."
Sawantdesai's assignment requires that students spend an hour or two creating an avatar and exploring the virtual world. Students must then write a paper on their experiences in regards to interpersonal communication.
"I'm looking at what sort of techniques students are using in their interactions. It's all about leadership, persuasion and interpersonal communication," he says.
Yet, not everyone agrees that MMOGs can be beneficial in the classroom.
"When you give someone anonymity, they will say and do things completely different from real life. You'll get 12-year-old kids saying obscene things. It's not a reflection of reality," says senior electrical engineering and math major Rob Vandermeulen. Vandermeulen says he used to play World of Warcraft.
Sawantdesai gives his students a list of five games to be used to complete the assignment. World of Warcraft is not one of them, which costs a fee to play. All the games Sawantdesai selected are free.
Despite that, plan to see many MMOGs growing in popularity and evolving into learning resources. The Confucius Institute at Michigan State University is developing a MMOG that will help users learn Chinese culture and language. Called "Zon," the game will start students in levels based on small towns and will take them into virtual cosmopolitan areas as they advance through various learning activities.
