Sean Duncan didn’t buy a game console until he was in his 30s, and when he did, it was a GameCube — years behind the trends and in a time when second-generation PlayStations were already making their rounds.
Today Duncan, now 43, is an assistant professor in the Learning Sciences program at the IU School of Education, a research scientist with the Center for Research on Learning and Technology at IU and a key player in advocating digital learning at the University and across the country.
He has also been chosen by the Higher Education Video Game Alliance to lead IU’s branch of the organization.
IU is one of 19 schools — which include top-tier and Ivy League universities such as Stanford, NYU and Yale — chosen as a charter location for the alliance, which was announced earlier this month at the Aspen Ideas Festival.
“We all view games as expressive media, not just technology,” Duncan said.
He said there are a number of university initiatives, programs and centers focusing on bettering kids’ learning right now, and the federal government has also been gathering research on connecting the digital world with the classroom.
“Everybody seems to be doing it one way or another,” he said, and the alliance is a formal opportunity to pool all of those resources together and work toward the common goal of stronger teaching and learning techniques.
“It’s more than just playing,” Duncan said. “It’s also about how to think about games in all sorts of new ways.”
That’s one of the problems, he notes. It seems that when people think about the typical gamer, they picture predominantly white males who are living out of their mothers’ basements.
That is not the case anymore, Duncan said. According to data collected by the Entertainment Software Association in 2014, women of age 18 or older represent a significantly greater portion of “gamers” than boys age 18 or younger.
The divide between genders is also relatively even. Of the entire game-playing population, 52 percent is male and 48 percent is female.
Duncan said we also need to pay attention to what defines a game. After introducing himself to a lecture hall of more than 100 students at Berkeley during a speaking session, he asked how many of the students identified as gamers.
“Maybe 40 hands go up, and they’re all guys,” he said. “And the women had their hands down and just looked like, ‘Oh, god, what have I gotten myself into?’”
He rephrased the question.
“How many of you have played ‘Words with Friends’ or ‘Candy Crush’ in the past day?”
And every hand shot up.
Video games are not just about space marines and elves and running around shooting things, Duncan said. Games are about social interaction, learning, and can be looked at from the perspective of design, technical literacy and programming or artistic and creative purposes.
Duncan is currently the only member of IU’s team in the alliance, but is reaching out to others.
Both faculty and students will have the opportunity to get involved in the team, which will consist of around five members.
The different charter institutions are there to provide opportunities that the other ones cannot, to fill in gaps where there is missing information.
“People from age 5 to 95 plays games of all sorts,” he said, “And we need to have a better conversation about that.”
