Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative

06/13/2016

The course is now live! "Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative," a free MOOC from coursera.org. Tolkien,LOTRO, and Lit--what more could you ask for? The videos, gameplay, forums are all available now, https://www.coursera.org/learn/onlinegames

Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative from Vanderbilt University. Intended for both newcomers who are curious about video games and experienced gamers who want to reflect on their passion, this course will explore what happens to stories, paintings, and films when they become the basis…

06/12/2016

Class starts tomorrow! And to whet your appetite, here's a fun article about the course that was just published:
http://lotroplayers.com/2016/06/11/coursera-online-games-course-begins-june-13/

Coursera’s free “Online Games” course will be starting up again on Monday, June 13. This course explores what happens to stories, paintings, and films when they become the basis of massively multiplayer online games. The course focuses on how The Lord of the Rings trilogy is transformed as it is pre...

06/07/2016

The new session of “Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative” is now open for registration at a new location and on a new, improved platform: https://www.coursera.org/.

If you missed the course earlier or would like to join us again, you are most welcome to sign up!

The course is a university-level English literature class—a multimedia tour of how literature, film, and games engage in the basic human activity of storytelling. Our journey will enable us to learn something about narrative theory, introduce us to some key topics in media studies and cover some of the history and theory of video games. It will also take us to some landmarks of romance literature, the neverending story that lies behind most fantasy games: J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring, and poetry by Spenser, Keats, Tennyson, Browning, and others.

The class goes live next Monday, June 13, 2016. I hope to see lots of you in the game and the class this summer!

Take free online classes from 120+ top universities and educational organizations. We partner with schools like Stanford, Yale, Princeton, and others to offer courses in dozens of topics, from computer science to teaching and beyond. Whether you are pursuing a passion or looking to advance your care...

04/11/2016

Interesting article about the strengths and weaknesses of online education. It took me 600 hours to design a custom made, multimodal MOOC, Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative. Given my experience, I'm impressed by the relevance of these two paragraphs to higher education:

"One can easily find examples of powerful pedagogical practices in online environments where the technology enhances and enables a professor to better support students’ learning through a broad range of tools, whether that includes an adaptive tutoring module, virtual labs, an entire online library of resources, enhanced opportunities for collaboration with peers and external experts, etc. But these are all one-off artisanal examples: faculty who have thoughtfully and deliberately refashioned their entire paradigm of teaching and learning.

"That is a stunt pilot consciously pushing her aircraft to the extremes of performance through tinkering with specific components of the plane. It is not a systems approach that is scalable to move passengers from Boston to Detroit."

Not to mention the brilliant collaborators who spent hours brainstorming with me about the course, including
Derek Bruff Douglas H. Fisher Douglas Schmidt Don Rodrigues Blaine Smith, Gayathri Narasimham, Michael Martin, and Aidan Hoyal

A review of MIT’s Online Education Policy Initiative report.

04/27/2015

The course is now open! The videos for Weeks 1 and 2 are visible, and the assignments are up for students to begin. We look forward to working with you in the class, and for those who play LOTRO, in the game too!
https://www.coursera.org/course/onlinegames

Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative from Vanderbilt University. Take free online classes from 115+ top universities and educational organizations. We partner with schools like Stanford, Yale, Princeton, and others to offer courses in dozens of topics, from computer science to teaching…

04/23/2015

Just a few days till the launch of "Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative", an upper-level English undergraduate MOOC where we examine the way Tolkien's writings have been represented across multiple forms of media, including film and online gaming (namely via "Lord of the Rings Online").

https://www.coursera.org/course/onlinegames

Over the last two years, 70,000+ students have enrolled from all parts of the globe, with Brazil, Germany, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia leading the way. This course, which is free and open to all, features passionate conversations about the many iterations of Tolkien's timeless stories in the Forums. The course goes live April 27, 2015.

04/21/2015

Less than a week to go until the launch Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative. This MOOC, an upper-level English undergraduate course on the impact of romance poetry on gaming, narrative structures across multiple media, and digital media, is free to all. Over the last two years, 70,000+ students have enrolled from all parts of the globe, with Brazil, Germany, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia leading the way. I love the passionate conversations about poetry in the Forums, the game design engineers who enjoy having the chance to explore the cultural implications of their profession, Tolkien fans who play Lord of the Rings Online, and so much more. The course goes live April 27, 2015.

04/20/2015

Session 3 starts next Monday the 27th! Check out the screenshot...where are we?

04/13/2015

Looking forward to Session 3, starting April 27!

Who can name the figure on the left? on the right?

03/13/2015

Announcing the launch of Session Three of "Online Games," April 27, 2015! The elite group of Community TAs and In-game Mentors can't wait to join with you all in the next stage of our journey.

11/06/2014

New research claims that video games do not increase violence in society.
http://www.aninews.in/newsdetail9/story190400/violent-movies-video-games-not-linked-to-increased-039-societal-039-violence.html

Washington, Nov 6 (ANI): A new study has claimed that there is no link between violence in movies and video games and societal violence.