Poster
Lynn Gelfand
Central Arizona College
Biography
Lynn Gelfand has a PhD in Folklore with a minor in Information Science from Indiana University. She specializes in myths, legends, and fairy tales in both traditional media formats (orality and print) and in contemporary media forms (film, television, and video games).
Abstract
Games have their roots in learning, in achieving a state in which mental and/or physical goals can be accomplished with optimal success. As videogames have grown in size and complexity over the last three decades, many educators are seeking ways to harness the entertainment value of videogames in order to support and expand traditional academic objectives, essentially uniting learning and games once again. “Gamification” in education (the incorporation of game-play into academic environments) draws on the type of dynamic engagement that drives people to willingly immerse themselves in artificial but often highly challenging interactive worlds to achieve what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls “flow”: a state of enjoyment in which a person’s concentration is completely centered and focused, with no superfluous external or internal information competing for attention. Like games, the illusionary world of narrative demands active engagement to sustain itself.
I am currently in the process of developing an online mythology class that will blend narrative with game and play with learning. The online class will use Joseph Campbell’s narrative model of The Hero’s Journey to structure the various levels of the game. The game will begin with the online student entering a museum for a mythology class project. This online class will be divided into five levels that correspond to Campbell’s structure of The Hero’s Journey: the Call, the Journey, the Mentor, the Treasure, and the Transformation. Each level will contain a series of challenges (e.g. puzzles to be solved, “bosses” to fight, etc.). To progress through the levels, the student will have to learn information about traditional myth, apply that information to the modern world, and explore what mythology in the future might look like based on technology forecasting theories (e.g. the “green” revolution, singularity, etc.) By using game and narrative to teach the many facets of mythology, the student will be actively engaged in his/her learning in a manner that enhances the absorption of information and that encourages both critical and creative thinking.