Postsecondary Play: The Role of Games and Social Media in Higher Education

Postsecondary Play: The Role of Games and Social Media in Higher Education William G. Tierney, Zoe B. Corwin, Tracey Fullerton, and Gisele Ragusa, eds. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014. Acknowledgments, glossary, contributors, index. 336 pp. $44.95 cloth. ISBN: 9871421413068In this anthology, educational researchers, game theorists, and learning-assessment experts reflect on the technological and cultural changes shaping higher education and how games and social media are contributing to this evolution. The volume affords a thorough consideration of the benefits, timing, challenges, and concerns that accompany this massive transformation in traditional institutions.The editors give primary importance to the need for a common language to connect practitioners and academics of the educational and game worlds, so Postsecondary Play both draws on the expertise of established voices and offers a readily accessible text. Their inclusion of a glossary marks a step forward for the emerging field of games and learning. The book plainly defines play, gamification, and social capital and establishes that the discourse about these topics involves a growing consensus. Audiences seeking to develop their knowledge of how games, social media, and higher learning intersect would do well to take note.The volume is divided into three connected parts. "Part I: What Is the Current Landscape of Higher Education?" outlines the complexities of college admission, transition, and social life. Although statistics regarding access to higher education are explored in depth by this grouping of authors, there is faint mention of how a socio-cultural perspective relates to lowincome students. Given that more than half of students attending public schools in 2014 came from nonwhite backgrounds, the inattention seems like a missed opportunity.Those unfamiliar with the market forces at work in higher education will benefit from reading this section. Laura Perna's chapter explores the socioeconomic disparities in the pathways to higher education and to training in technology. David Conely and Mary Seburn's essay focuses on students' use of social media to navigate the transition between high school and college. They conclude that while the transition process still requires "privileged knowledge," well-designed technology could help open college doors to underrepresented students."Part II: What's In a Game?" gives readers the opportunity to consider games and social media in the context of higher learning. Game experts will likely recognize descriptions provided of the goals, systems, assessment, engagement, and feedback embedded in games. The risks of preserving outdated pedagogies form a key message here. Employing technology to replicate textbooks or maintain topdown, lecture-based teaching methods will not help institutions. Instead, the authors encourage stakeholders to think of learning as a cocreation. Henry Jenkins and Adam S. Khan, for example, explore the potentials of networked learning, collective intelligence, demonstrations of student mastery, and radical shifts in testing protocol.Katie Salen takes readers back to the analog origins of basketball, illustrating how engagement is rooted in the power of play. …