Pedagogical Implications

“Literacy” is frequently linked to scholastic endeavors and has been narrowly defined as one’s ability to read and write.  New definitions of “literacy,” however, have been permeating composition studies and better suit the purpose of New Literacy Studies, helping us to contextualize the ways in which we can use gaming fan-fiction as a literacy practice.  As defined by Gee (2001a), literacy is “the mastery of or fluent control over a secondary Discourse.  Therefore, literacy is always plural: literacies (there are many of them, since there are many secondary Discourses…)” (p. 529).  By combining the literacy of gaming with the literacy of fan-fiction, we can explore new ways of thinking and encourage students to develop writing fluency. [2]

Through gaming fan-fiction, gamers will be able to engage in gaming literacy practices as they create stories for other fans, and fan-fiction writers will be able to further explore the literacies of gaming as they read and respond to these stories. Developing these literacies in the composition classroom will allow instructors to more systematically guide students to discover their own fluencies. So instead of following a more teacher-centered approach to the writing process—where the instructor defines what constitutes as “good” writing and students work to emulate it—students who write gaming fan-fiction will be offered a more hands-on, constructivist approach that allows them to create meaning and critical assessment for themselves. And as Jared Keengwe, Grace Onchwari, and Joachim Agamba (2013) noted, “In modern technology-rich classrooms, there is need for teachers to move from teacher-centered lecture approaches to constructivist approaches” (p. 889). Gaming fan-fiction can fulfill this perceived need by allowing instructors to take on the roles of facilitators as students rise to the roles of collaborative learners.

With crossover literate practices like collaboration and digital fluency, gaming and fan-fiction offer a unique opportunity for composition instructors to help facilitate engaged student learning. Perhaps even more importantly, however, gaming fan-fiction as a pedagogical practice can help students develop the 21st-century literacies that will prepare them for future work. As defined by the 21st Century Workforce Commission (2000):

The current and future health of America’s 21st Century Economy depends directly on how broadly and deeply Americans reach a new level of literacy — “21st Century Literacy” — that includes strong academic skills, thinking, reasoning, teamwork skills, and proficiency in using technology. (p. 5)

21st-century literacies are strikingly similar to gaming and fan-fiction literacies as the discourse communities of gaming and fan-fiction operate under similar goals of teamwork, reasoning, and advanced technology skills. If implemented properly in the composition classroom, these literacies could easily help students develop the strong academic skills that would help ensure their continued success.

Collaboration, for instance, is already embedded within gaming and fan-fiction communities. This means that gaming fan-fiction writing will not only organically help students build the 21st-cenury literacy of teamwork, but also help students develop effective writing practices like peer editing. And the focus on “non-expert” writers in the fan-fiction community will open up an opportunity for discussion and reasoning, letting less-advanced writers learn from their peers and boost their confidence. Through the implementation and evaluation of gaming and fan-fiction literacies, composition students will be able to think critically about their roles as communicators in online spaces, offering them the chance to assess the roles that their audiences and online identities play. Finally, as students work within an online fan-fiction community, they will be able to use their knowledge of and experience with gaming paratexts [3] to develop their technological proficiencies. Overall, the combined literacy practices of gaming and fan-fiction will help students develop 21st-century literacies that will prove to be useful in real-world enterprise.

Next page.

 

Notes

  1. Ideally, the pedagogical implications explored in this section of the webtext would be applicable to a composition course designed (and marketed towards) student gamers.  This would ensure their collective experience with the gaming discourse community and allow them to critically assess the literate practices of gaming. Similarly, these practices could be used in any composition course that places a video game at the center of its course design (see Colby & Colby, 2008; deWinter & Vie, 2008; Hsu & Wang, 2010; Sabatino, 2014).
  2. Because gaming literacies are decidedly multimodal, some consideration should be given to multimodal writing practices. Though this webtext primarily explores the advantages of creating alphabetic-text gaming fan-fiction in the composition classroom, other opportunities for multimodal gaming fan-fiction could be explored in the future.  Future research and consideration could focus on tribute games (e.g., Borderlands Tribute at Kongregate), which would allow players to develop game-design skills in conjunction with composition skills; game parodies (see Newgrounds.com), which would afford student-writers the chance to revise their “texts” and partake in critical analysis by using the comment features embedded in gaming-sharing websites; and multimodal fan-fiction (e.g., The Sims 3 Movies and Stories), which would offer similar opportunities for exploring fan-fiction and gaming literacies as the ones described here.
  3. For more information on gaming paratexts, see Mia Consalvo’s (2007) book Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames and Thomas Apperley and Christopher Walsh’s (2012) article “What Digital Games and Literacy Have in Common: A Heuristic for Understanding Pupils’ Gaming Literacy.”