Today’s Plan:
- Sicart Papers
- Project 2: Talking Methodology
- Homework
Sicart Papers
I thought I had gotten all the Sicart drafts back–apparently I missed 2. I’ll do those this afternoon. The final draft is due on Thursday at midnight.
Hi all,
I’ll be updating Monday’s class notes for today; I’ve got an activity planned for today that should give you a sense of how to develop a Project 2 methodology.
Also, remember that you have the Writing a Second Research Annotation due before Friday’s class. We will meet in the Ross 1240 computer lab on Friday.
A reminder that the Sicart project closes Thursday at midnight. You still have a chance to pass in any previous assignments. This includes:
1. Gaming Journal
2. Sicart Summary Paper
3. Walking Dead Episode 1 Responses
4. Sicart “Moral Dilemmas” post
5. Sicart _Beyond Choices_ post
You pretty much can’t write the paper without doing these things, so use them as pre-writing activities and throw something into Canvas so I can give you some credit.
Note: this is a “hard out” on Project 1. You are free to submit any missing Sicart assignments up until Thursday at midnight. On Friday morning I will “zero” any missing assignments.
A few resources:
- A reminder that you can visit the Writing Center to discuss your paper for extra credit.
- If you are visiting the Writing Center, then here’s a copy of the assignment that you can share with them
- If you missed Friday’s class, then here’s a link to a workshop document that contains both useful quotes for discussing key Sicart concepts and a model introduction with a road map
- Here is a copy of the rubric
One last piece of advice for improving style and proofreading: before you turn in the final paper, take the time to read the paper out loud. Physically voicing sentences makes a tremendous difference, since your tongue will catch mistakes that your eyes simply do not see. If you are struggling to read a sentence, see if you can break it up into two smaller sentences. See if you can rewrite it with character/action syntax. See if you can reorganize it as a If… then… or a X, because Y (more logically balanced constructions).
Project 2: Talking Methodology
Let’s take a look at the Burgess et al article and ask the key research methodology questions:
- How did they collect?
- How did they analyze?
- How did they ensure reliability?
Sample Methodology
A few warm up videos.
Homework
Complete the Writing A Second Research Annotation assignment in Canvas.
For Friday’s class, read and annotate one of the following articles (they are all located in the files section of Canvas):
- Shaw. 2016. Where Is the Queerness in Games? Types of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Content in Digital Games
- Bayeck et al. 2018. Representations of Africans in Popular Video Games
- Utsch. 2017. Queer Identities in Video Games: Data Visualization for a Quantitative Analysis of Representation
- Burgess et al. 2007. Sex, Lies, and Video Games: The Portrayal of Male and Female Characters on Video Game Covers
- Gestos et al. Representation in Video Games: A Systemic Review of Literature in Consideration of Adult Female Well-Being [note–meta analysis, keyword method–focus on findings]
- Bjørkelo. 2020. “Elves are Jews with Pointy Ears and Gay Magic”: White Nationalist Readings of The Elder Scrolls V: SkyrimYou can find these articles in the files section of Canvas. The purpose of this assignment is to familiarize you with different ways of developing research studies–how do you select objects to analyze? How do you analyze them? How do you build your “research machine”?
Writing Annotations
Writing annotations is a part of any research project: they are essentially a quasi-formal approach to writing reading notes. I teach annotating as a three-paragraph process:
- Paragraph One: the first paragraph covers the purpose, findings, and recommendations of the article. What did the authors set out to prove? What are their major findings? And/Or what concrete recommendations do they make based on those findings? [You should find this material in the intro, discussion, and conclusion sections]
- Paragraph Two: the second paragraph details the methods, including how many subjects were in the study, how subjects were found, the location of the study (if relevant), the length of the study, how data was analyzed/synthesized, and any other significant details regarding their research process. [The Methods section]
- Paragraph Three: What you write in the third paragraph of an annotation is unique to the project at hand. Here’s where you free write, developing ideas about how this source might contribute to your project. In this case, I am asking you to design a study of video games, examining representations of race, gender, or sexuality. So–what in this study is particularly valuable to that project? What ideas do you have? How can we use this? Here’s where you just get to think and fire off ideas.
