Recent posts for David Williamson Shaffer

Conversation between James Gee and David Shaffer

Jim and David talk about games and the future of education.

Originally posted 2008-03-29 11:03:35. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Another fan?

In a recent op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor, Jonathan Zimmerman takes a line that will sound familiar to readers of the Epistemic Games blog. Writing about Harvard’s recent move to no longer require (or even encourage) final exams, Zimmerman points out:

Final examinations reflect an antiquated and largely discredited theory of learning, which equates knowledge with factual recall. By discouraging exams, then, Harvard is hardly forsaking academic rigor. Instead, it’s clearing the way for a more engaging, challenging, and truly educative college experience.

The recent Gee/Shaffer essay on Looking Where the Light is Bad make the same point–and even goes further…

The importance of IP

A recent report by the British Government argues that, as in the US:

Intellectual Property is a critical component of our present and future success in the global economy. The UK’s economic competitiveness is increasingly driven by knowledge-based industries, especially in manufacturing, science-based sectors and the creative industries.

According to some sources, nearly half of the GDP of the United States is based on intellectual property.

The report focuses on copyright issues, and clearly and appropriate policy for protection of intellectual proprety (that also doesn’t constrain the development of new intellectual property!) is critical in a knowledge economy. But so are the processes that lead to the generation of new ideas: innovation and creativity.

Originally posted 2006-12-10 10:26:27. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Assessment in the digital age

A short piece from WCER gives a nice description of our recent work on assessment, although it doesn’t mention the help we’ve had from the Macarthur Foundation’s Assessment Working Group led by Jim Gee, and also from Andre Rupp and Bob Mislevy at the University of Maryland.

In computer games, students can learn by solving problems that are realistic, complex, and meaningful. So games have great potential to teach the kind of thinking that young people need in the digital age, says educational psychology professor David Williamson Shaffer. But after years of designing and testing digital learning environments emphasizing learning in action, Shaffer has turned to the problem of assessment. Shaffer’s research is housed in the Wisconsin Center for Education Research.

Originally posted 2009-06-03 03:37:32. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Doctor Thornburg, I presume

I got a wonderful email the other day from Dr. David Thornburg, who is the director of the Thornburg Center for Space Exploration.

What was so wonderful about it is that when I read his name and biography, I realized that two decades ago when I was teaching in California, David gave a talk that I attended, and his talk was part of my formative thinking about graduate school and my career beyond.

And now, 20 years later, not even realizing that he had been one of my inspirations, here was an email from him, talking about the similarities in the work we were doing.

Needless to say, a great phone conversation ensued.

One of David’s recent pieces talks about some of the connections between his work and epistemic games, and I look forward to continuing the conversation….