Byline overview

Part internet printing press, part computational tool for thought, ByLine is the epistemic game engine used in (Journalism Game), the epistemic role-playing game of professional journalism. Players use ByLine to write and publish stories in an online science newspaper. At the same time, ByLine is designed to help players learn to think like journalists about science and society.

Lead Researchers : David Hatfield

Epistemic Games at Games Learning and Society Conference

A 1.5 hour session at the 2006 Games Learning and Society conference was devoted to research on epistemic games:

In his recent bestseller “The World is Flat,” Thomas Friedman (2005) argues that industrialized countries can no longer compete in the global economy on the basis of making and selling commodities. Their competitive edge increasingly comes from how well they produce products, services, and technologies that are new, special, and non-standard, and thus are not easily produced across the globe by competitors.

But how and when should children learn the kind of innovative thinking they will need for success in the new, interconnected, high-tech, work-anywhere, just-on-time, on-demand, world of global competition?
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Urban Science: From Civic Engagement to Civic Science

Sowatzke, E.A., & Shaffer, D.W. (2006). Presented at the Games+Learning+Society Conference. Madison, WI.

Designing the 45-hour version of the game

As is the case with any epistemic game, the first step in designing the 45-hour version of Digital Zoo was to conduct an epistemography: a type of ethnographic study that gains insight into both the learning practices of a profession as well as its underlying epistemology. Understanding how novices develop the particular ways of knowing, doing, being, caring, and thinking – or epistemic frame – of their profession allows us to better model and adapt these learning practices within an epistemic game.

More Information

Selected Publications:

- The Digital Zoo chapter in How Computer Games Help Children Learn

- SodaConstructing Knowledge through Exploratoids: Gina Svarovsky’s work on the Digital Zoo game engine

Conferences:

- Gina spoke in our Epistemic Games session at the 2006 Games, Learning, and Society conference. Go here to listen to the webcast.