Media contact: Anna Dahlstein, (919) 515-3585
 | Online gaming and learning expert Constance Steinkuehler will be the featured speaker at the NCSU Libraries' I. T. Littleton Seminar on Tuesday, May 1, 2007. It will be held at 2:00 P.M. in the second floor Assembly Room in the East Wing of the D. H. Hill Library. A reception will follow the seminar. Steinkuehler's talk, entitled "Digital Media Literacy and Learning in Virtual Worlds," will address the forms of literacy that constitute participation in massively multiplayer online games (MMOs), also known as virtual worlds. |
Currently an assistant professor in the curriculum and instruction department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Steinkuehler researches the intellectual practices that aid navigation, cognition and learning in virtual worlds. Such practices include informal scientific reasoning, collaborative problem solving, media and computational literacy, and the social learning mechanisms that support the development of such expertise, such as reciprocal apprenticeship and collective intelligence.
Steinkuehler's doctoral dissertation was a two-year online cognitive ethnography of the game Lineage, focusing specifically on the forms of cognition, learning, and literacy recruited from those who game. She teaches "Research in Online Virtual Worlds," "Analyzing Online Social Interaction," "Gender and Technology," and "Critical Instructional Practices on the Internet" and runs the annual Games, Learning, and Society Conference in Madison, Wisconsin.
This year's I. T. Littleton Seminar comes soon after the inauguration of the NCSU Libraries' Learning Commons, an innovative environment designed to support students' group work and social interaction through a variety of cutting-edge tools and services. Steinkuehler will provide an interesting perspective on how virtual and physical spaces build on each other, and ways in which many current students communicate, collaborate, and learn.
The annual I. T. Littleton Seminars are funded by an endowment established in 1987 to honor former Library Director Littleton upon his retirement from NC State. The Libraries welcomes your continued support of the I. T. Littleton Seminar series. If you would like to make a voluntary contribution to support future seminars, please send your check, payable to the Friends of the Library, to: Friends of the Library, NCSU Libraries, Box 7111, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695-7111. Please note "I. T. Littleton Seminar Endowment" on your check. For more information, please call (919) 515-2841.
Directions to the D. H. Hill Library at 2 Broughton Drive (near the intersection of Hillsborough Street and Horne St.) in Raleigh.
Parking information.
Photo credit: Ming-Fong Jan
